Metrics instrumentation guide

This guide describes how to develop Usage Ping metrics using metrics instrumentation.

Nomenclature

• Instrumentation class:

  • Inherits one of the metric classes: DatabaseMetric, RedisHLLMetric or GenericMetric.
  • Implements the logic that calculates the value for a Usage Ping metric.

• Metric definition The Usage Data metric YAML definition.

• Hardening: Hardening a method is the process that ensures the method fails safe, returning a fallback value like -1.

How it works

A metric definition has the instrumentation_class field, which can be set to a class.

The defined instrumentation class should have one of the existing metric classes: DatabaseMetric, RedisHLLMetric, or GenericMetric.

Using the instrumentation classes ensures that metrics can fail safe individually, without breaking the entire process of Usage Ping generation.

We have built a domain-specific language (DSL) to define the metrics instrumentation.

Database metrics

Example of a merge request that adds a database metric.

module Gitlab
  module Usage
    module Metrics
      module Instrumentations
        class CountBoardsMetric < DatabaseMetric
          operation :count

          relation { Board }
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Redis HyperLogLog metrics

Example of a merge request that adds a RedisHLL metric.

Count unique values for i_quickactions_approve event.

time_frame: 28d
data_source: redis_hll
instrumentation_class: 'Gitlab::Usage::Metrics::Instrumentations::RedisHLLMetric'
options:
  events:
    - i_quickactions_approve

Generic metrics

Example of a merge request that adds a generic metric.

module Gitlab
  module Usage
    module Metrics
      module Instrumentations
        class UuidMetric < GenericMetric
          value do
            Gitlab::CurrentSettings.uuid
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Creating a new metric instrumentation class

To create a stub instrumentation for a Usage Ping metric, you can use a dedicated generator:

The generator takes the class name as an argument and the following options:

• --type=TYPE Required. Indicates the metric type. It must be one of: database, generic, redis_hll.
• --ee Indicates if the metric is for EE.

rails generate gitlab:usage_metric CountIssues --type database
        create lib/gitlab/usage/metrics/instrumentations/count_issues_metric.rb
        create spec/lib/gitlab/usage/metrics/instrumentations/count_issues_metric_spec.rb