I've had the discussion about metrics and monitoring (or metrics vs. monitoring) so many times that I turned it into a brief presentation. So now I'm turning that into a brief article here.
Metrics and Monitoring
Written by disco on July 1, 2018 in Metrics, Monitoring.
Last update on July 1, 2018.
Time-series Graphs and Downsampling
Written by disco on May 13, 2014 in Metrics.
Last update on June 14, 2018.
In general, the usual display of time series data is a line graph - makes sense, it's the most direct visual translation of the data. The problem I keep running into is not with the graphs or the data, but expectations. In my work the biggest consumers of graphs are engineering teams and engineers love data, and they want all of it. That's a good thing, but it causes misunderstandings when they start looking at their graphs.
Solving D3 Graph Interaction In StatusWolf
Written by disco on May 11, 2014 in Metrics.
Last update on June 14, 2018.
There are many things to consider when building an analytics dashboarding tool, dealing with data sources and the mountains of information they contain, parsing that information into something understandable and presenting it to the user. Getting that last step right is the key to the whole process. In developing StatusWolf I'm constantly working to refine the graph presentation and interaction, and small changes can make big differences.