Create metrics from other data types

Use New Relic's metrics API service to define rules for creating metrics from your other types of data, such as events, logs, or spans. Recommendation: Before you begin, review our requirements and tips for creating rules.

Create a metrics rule

To create a rule for creating metrics from events, logs, or spans:

1. Construct the metrics rule using NRQL.
2. Construct a NerdGraph (GraphQL format) API request that contains your NRQL rule.
3. Create the metric by making the API request.

Once a metric is created, you can query and chart it using NRQL.

Step 1. Create NRQL query rule

The most important part of creating a metrics rule is constructing the NRQL query that defines the metric for your data from events, logs, or spans. You can create up to 10 metrics with a single NRQL query by following this procedure:

1. Using New Relic's NRQL interface, construct a query for the metric you want to create. For example:

   FROM ProcessSample SELECT average(ioTotalReadBytes)
   WHERE nr.entityType = 'HOST'
   

2. Edit the query to use one of the three available metric types:

   • summary: Use if the query's function is min, max, sum, count, or average.
   • uniqueCount: Use if the query's function is uniqueCount.
   • distribution: Use if the query's function is percentile or histogram.

   This example query uses average, so use summary:

   FROM ProcessSample SELECT summary(ioTotalReadBytes) 
   WHERE nr.entityType = 'HOST'
   

3. Decide on the attributes you want to attach to the metric, following the limits on the cardinality of unique metric-name/attribute-value combinations.

   Recommendation: Run a separate query to ensure this count isn't over 50,000 for a 24-hour window. For example:

   FROM ProcessSample
   SELECT uniqueCount(awsRegion, awsAvailabilityZone, commandName)
   WHERE nr.entityType = 'HOST'
   SINCE 1 DAY AGO

4. To be able to aggregate and filter your metrics, add the attributes you want to attach to the metric using the FACET clause. For example:

   FROM ProcessSample
   SELECT summary(ioTotalReadBytes) WHERE nr.entityType = 'HOST' 
   FACET awsRegion, awsAvailabilityZone, commandName

5. Set the name of the metric using the AS function. For example:

   FROM ProcessSample SELECT summary(ioTotalReadBytes) AS 'io.totalread.bytes'
   WHERE nr.entityType = 'HOST' FACET awsRegion, awsAvailabilityZone, commandName

Once your NRQL rule is complete, use it to create the API request.

Step 2. Create API request

After you build the NRQL rule to convert data from events, logs, or spans to metrics, continue with building the API request. You can use our NerdGraph API tool to explore the data structure and to construct and make your request.

To check that the rule was created correctly, you can run a query to return that rule using its ID. For tips on querying the metrics you've created, see Query and chart your metrics.

Example NerdGraph API request

The following example NerdGraph API request uses the same NRQL rule from step 1. The IO Total Read Bytes Rule creates a metric named io.totalread.bytes. (The rule name can have spaces, which differs from the metric naming rules.)

mutation {
  eventsToMetricsCreateRule(rules: {
    name: "io.totalread.bytes for computeSample entities",
    description:"Created by Zach on March 27, 2019. Used by team Network.",
    nrql:"FROM ProcessSample SELECT summary(ioTotalReadBytes) AS 'io.totalread.bytes' WHERE nr.entityType = 'ComputeSample' FACET awsRegion, awsAvailabilityZone, commandName",
    accountId: 123456
  })
  {
    successes {
      id
      name
      nrql
      enabled
    }
    failures {
      submitted {
        name
        nrql
        accountId        
      }
      errors {
        reason
        description
      }
    }
  }
}

In this request:

Request elements	Description
mutation	One of the basic API operation types.
eventsToMetricsCreateRule	The method being called to create a rule.
rules	Takes four parameters: name: The name of the rule. description: Optional. The description of the rule. We recommend you include information about who created the metric data and who will be using the data. accountId: The New Relic account ID where the events, logs, or spans live and the metrics will be created. nrql: The NRQL query that creates the rule. For more on this, see Create NRQL query.
successes and submitted blocks	Here you define the data returned by a successful or failed response. Available parameters for these blocks include: id (ruleId for submitted) name description nrql enabled (enabled/disabled status) accountId
ruleId and accountId	If a failure occurs, then the submitted ruleId and accountId will be returned along with the error reason and error description.

Example NerdGraph API response

Here's an example of a returned response:

{
  "data": {
    "eventsToMetricsCreateRule": {
      "failures": [],
      "successes": [
        {
          "enabled": true,
          "id": "46",
          "name": "io.totalread.bytes for computeSample entities",
          "nrql": "FROM ProcessSample SELECT summary(ioTotalReadBytes) AS 'io.totalread.bytes' WHERE nr.entityType = 'ComputeSample' FACET awsRegion, awsAvailabilityZone, commandName"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Step 3. Create a metrics rule with API request

When your API request is ready, you can use the NerdGraph API to make the request, which will create the metrics.

Query and chart your metrics

After you create a metrics rule to convert data for your events, logs, or spans, you can view the new metric data in the New Relic UI. To view your data:

1. Go to New Relic's NRQL query interface.

2. Run the following query to see the name of all your metrics:

   SELECT uniques(metricName) FROM Metric

3. Pick the metric of interest, then run the following query to see the available attributes:

   SELECT * FROM Metric where metricName = 'yourMetric'

4. If you don't see expected data, follow the troubleshooting procedures.

The available NRQL aggregator functions depend on the metric type you created. Here are some examples.

Summary metric example

If you created a summary metric type, you can use the count, sum, max, min, and average aggregator functions, as shown in the following query:

SELECT count(appStartResponseTime), sum(appStartResponseTime), max(appStartResponseTime), min(appStartResponseTime),  average(appStartResponseTime) FROM Metric 

Count metric example

If you created a uniqueCount metric type, you can only use the uniqueCount function, as shown in the following query:

SELECT uniqueCount(playbackErrorStreamUniqueCount) * 100 / uniqueCount(streamUniqueCount) AS '% of Streams Impacted' FROM Metric

Distribution metric example

If you created a distribution metric type, use the percentile or histogram functions, as shown in the following queries:

SELECT percentile(service.responseTime, 95) FROM Metric

OR

SELECT histogram(service.responseTime, 10, 20) FROM Metric

Troubleshooting

If your NerdGraph call is not constructed correctly, you may receive a message like this:

Cannot parse the unexpected character "\u201C”

Verify the quotes in the NerdGraph call are not smart quotes (curly quotes). Our NerdGraph API only accepts straight quotes.

For more help