Visualize histogram distribution

A distribution chart takes a query result and visualizes the counts of data points bucketed by values.

Distribution chart queries

Distribution charts use one or more PromQL queries to retrieve data to visualize.

Use the following Option to modify your query:

• Truncation strategy: Truncation strategy to apply to the query. This modifies the raw query. Observability Platform selects the best strategy for fit when possible, and displays Auto as the selected strategy.

  Available strategies are:

  • Auto
  • Off
  • Avg
  • Min
  • Max

  Changing your truncation strategy adds truncation information as additional bands or bars on your chart and details into the legend.

Configure a distribution chart

You can configure a distribution chart by modifying its Settings.

Any changes you make in the panel’s Settings tab are immediately displayed in the Preview pane, but take effect only when you both click Apply in the Edit panel interface and then click Save.

Observability Platform doesn’t fully support directly editing a panel’s JSON representation. Chronosphere recommends you configure panels by using the user interface. Use the JSON representation only for managing your configuration as code with tools such as Chronoctl and Terraform.

Modify a distribution chart’s units and formatting

The Unit and formatting section in a table’s Settings tab defines how the chart interprets and displays the panel’s query units.

• Unit: Defines the unit used to render the Y-axis. This has the most significant effect when you enable Abbreviate. Defaults to Decimal.

  • Decimal: Base 10 values. Observability Platform renders a value of 1000000 as 1M.

  • Bytes: As decimal multiple-byte units. Observability Platform renders a value of 1000000 as 1MB.

  • Time: Determines the unit of time that Observability Platform uses to interpret a numeric value.

  • Percent: Interprets the value as a percentile, representing 0% to 100% in a range of either 0.0 to 1.0 (Percent (0.0-1.0)) or 0 and 100 (Percent (0-100)).

    For example, Observability Platform renders a value of 1.0 in Percent (0.0-1.0) as 100%, and in Percent (0-100) as 1%.

• Decimals: Defines how many decimal places Observability Platform renders for values. Default renders decimal places only if necessary and rounds to the nearest value. Numeric values from 0 to 4 render the corresponding number of decimal places.
• Abbreviate: Toggles whether to abbreviate units on the Y-axis. For example, if enabled, Observability Platform renders a value of 100000000 as 100M. You can toggle this setting only if you set the Unit to Decimal or Bytes; Time units Time units are always abbreviated and Percent values don’t require the toggle. Defaults to true.

Modify a distribution chart’s percentile markers

The Percentile markers section in a table’s Settings tab defines how the chart displays percentiles. Select one or more checkboxes to display the following percentiles on the graph:

• P50
• P75
• P90
• P95
• P99