Custom metrics - filter, group by characteristics of a field

[dcole66]

I've creating some custom metrics where I'm posting a time taken (in second) with a number of field (tags? I come from an influx background).

custom.metric,type=search,applid=1,doctype=A,user=User1,recordsreturned=10 1.5
custom.metric,type=search,applid=1,doctype=B,user=12345,recordsreturned=10 1.5

As you can imagine, the user field is likely to have lots of entries....and while filtering on a single user to see all their counts, generally things would be banded together.  In this case, User1 is internal, and user 12345 is external.

I use SQL server for this information primarily, and our queries are somewhat like

select count(*) where user is numeric as ExternalCount

select count(*) where user is not numeric as internalCount

Is there a function I can use in dynatrace to create Data Explorer query similarly?   Or does my upstream application need to work that out and add it as it's own field when submitting the metric.

[MichalOlszewski · Accepted solution]

Hi @dcole66 ,

The best approach for You would be report those as events to Grail (SaaS only) and do calculation as needed.

Otherwise You will hit dimension and aggregation limits while storing such amount of dimensions - so not only You will not be able to query them but they will start to deteriorate over time as moving aggregation will start to get rid of "insignificant ones" - which in this approach will be most of it.
You can help Yourself thou by adding one more dimension while reporting them : IsExternal:(Yes/No) if possible. This would allow You to split using this dimension - easy and should be pretty simple in implementation.

Bests
Michal

[dcole66]

Hi thanks for replying. 

I think that what I ended up doing.   Making a time taken metric, and removed all the user details and just went for as you said isExternal.   I then made a recordsFound metric with mostly the same details.