SYNOPSIS

<rrdfile> = sql//<libdbi driver>/<driver-option-name>=<driver-option-value>/...:[/rrdminstepsize=<stepsize>]:[/rrdfillmissing=<fill missing n seconds>]://<table>:/<unixtimestamp column>:/<data value column>:[/derive]:/<where clause 1>:/...:/<where clause n>

DESCRIPTION

This pseudo-rrd-filename defines a sql datasource:

sql//

  magic cookie-prefix for a libdbi type datasource

<libdbi driver>

  which libdbi driver to use (e.g: mysql)

<driver-option-name>=<driver-option-value>

  defines the parameters that are required to connect to the database with the given libdbi driver
  (These drivers are libdbi dependent - for details please look at the driver documentation of libdbi!)

/rrdminstepsize=<minimum step size>

  defines the minimum number of the step-length used for graphing (default: 300 seconds)

/rrdfillmissing=<fill missing seconds>

  defines the number of seconds to fill with the last value to avoid NaN boxes due to data-insertation jitter (default: 0 seconds)

<table>

  defines the table from which to fetch the resultset.
  If there is a need to fetch data from several tables, these tables can be defined by separating the tablenames with a "+"
  hex-type-encoding via %xx are translated to the actual value, use %% to use %

<[*]unixtimestamp column>

  defines the column of E<lt>tableE<gt> which contains the unix-timestamp 
  - if this is a DATETIME field in the database, then prefix with leading '*'
  hex-type-encoding via %xx are translated to the actual value, use %% to use %

<data value column>

  defines the column of E<lt>tableE<gt> which contains the value column, which should be graphed
  hex-type-encoding via %xx are translated to the actual value, use %% to use %

/derive

  defines that the data value used should be the delta of the 2 consecutive values (to simulate COUNTER or DERIVE type datasources)

/<where clause(s)>

  defines one (ore more) where clauses that are joined with AND to filter the entries in the <lt>table<gt>
  hex-type-encoding via %xx are translated to the actual value, use %% to use %

the returned value column-names, which can be used as ds-names, are:

min, avg, max, count and sigma

  are returned to be used as ds-names in your DS definition.
  The reason for using this is that if the consolidation function is used for min/avg and max, then the engine is used several times.
  And this results in the same SQL Statements used several times

EXAMPLES

Here an example of a table in a MySQL database:

  DB connect information
    dbhost=127.0.0.1
    user=rrd
    password=secret
    dbname=rrd
  here the table:
    CREATE TABLE RRDValue (
      RRDKeyID      bigint(20) NOT NULL,
      UnixTimeStamp int(11) NOT NULL,
      value         double default NOT NULL,
      PRIMARY KEY  (RRDKeyID,UnixTimeStamp)
    );

and the RRDKeyID we want to graph for is: 1141942900757789274

The pseudo rrd-filename to access this is: ``sql//mysql/host=127.0.0.1/dbname=rrd/username=rrd/password=secret://RRDValue:/UnixTimeStamp:/value:/RRDKeyID=1141464142203608274''

To illustrate this here a command to create a graph that contains the actual values.

  DS_BASE="sql//mysql/host=127.0.0.1/dbname=rrd/username=rrd/password=passwd//RRDValue/UnixTimeStamp/value/RRDKeyID=1141942900757789274"
  rrdtool graph test.png --imgformat=PNG --start=-1day --end=+3hours --width=1000 --height=600 \
    "DEF:min=$DS_BASE:min:AVERAGE" \
    "LINE1:min#FF0000:value" \
    "DEF:avg=$DS_BASE:avg:AVERAGE" \
    "LINE1:avg#00FF00:average" \
    "DEF:max=$DS_BASE:max:AVERAGE" \
    "LINE1:max#FF0000:max" \
    "DEF:sigma=$DS_BASE:sigma:AVERAGE" \
    "CDEF:upper=avg,4,sigma,*,+" \
    "LINE1:upper#0000FF:+4 sigma" \
    "CDEF:lower=avg,4,sigma,*,-" \
    "LINE1:lower#0000FF:-4 sigma"

NOTES

* Naturally you can also use any other kind of driver that libdbi supports - e.g postgres, ...

* From the way the data source is joined, it should also be possible to do joins over different tables
  (separate tables with ``,'' in table and add in the WHERE Clauses the table equal joins. 
  This has not been tested!!!)

* It should also be relatively simple to add to the database using the same data source string.
  This has not been implemented...

* The aggregation functions are ignored and several data columns are used instead
  to avoid querying the same SQL several times when minimum, average and maximum are needed for graphing...

* for DB efficiency you should think of having 2 tables, one containing historic values and the other containing the latest data.
  This second table should be kept small to allow for the least amount of blocking SQL statements.
  With mysql you can even use myisam table-type for the first and InnoDB for the second. 
  This is especially interesting as with tables with +100M rows myisam is much smaller then InnoDB.

* To debug the SQL statements set the environment variable RRDDEBUGSQL and the actual SQL statements and the timing is printed to stderr.

Performance issues with MySQL backend

LibDBI has a big performance issue when you retrieve data from a MySQL server. Performance impact is exponentially based on the number of values you retrieve from the database. For example, it would take more than 2 seconds to graph 5DS on 150 hours of data with a precision of 5 minutes (against 100ms when data comes from a RRD file). This bug has been fixed on latest version of LibDBI (not release yet). At that time, you would need to compile libdbi and libdbi-drivers from CVS repository to fix it. You can find more information on this libdbi-users mailing list thread : http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=30320894

AUTHOR

Martin Sperl <[email protected]>