Categorical chart visualization

Latest Dynatrace

When to use a categorical bar chart visualization

Use a categorical bar chart:

When you want to group your data according to defined categories and compare their aggregated values rather than see them over time. It's particularly useful when you have more than five distinct categories, where a pie or donut visualization becomes insufficient to compare the different proportions.
When you have frequency or count data for distinct categories. For example, requests by response code, errors by error type, or log lines by status.

Example

Categorical bar chart

The above categorical bar chart is based on the following query.

fetch logs
| summarize count(), by:{loglevel}

In the Categorical bar chart options section, Category axis label is set to loglevel to show the label on the X-axis.

This categorical bar chart shows the values on the vertical axis and the categories along the horizontal axis.

Title

Use this field to add a title. The edit box is displayed at the top of the options panel.

Title edit box

You can use emojis such as 😃 and 🌍 and ❤️.
You can use variables.

Example:

Define variables called Status and Emoji in your dashboard.
Set Title to Current $Emoji status is $Status.
Set Status to Good.
Set Emoji to 🌍.

The title will be displayed as Current 🌍 status is Good.

Visualization

If you aren't sure that you chose the right visualization, use the visualization selector to try different visualizations.

Data mapping

The data mapping section shows how a column of your result is mapped to the visualization.

For a categorical bar chart, the data mapping section includes:

Category—the column of your result that is displayed as the category.
Value—the value (numerical) to display. If multiple values are listed, you can select more than one at a time.

Categorical chart options

To learn about options quickly and decide what works best for you, turn options on and off and see the effect immediately on your chart. For example, does it look best with a label or without? Turn that option on and off and see for yourself.

Axes

Category axis label
Value axis label
Min and Max
Relative values

General

Color mode—select multi-color or single-color mode.
Color palettes—select a color palette from the list.
Legend position—select where to display the visualization legend:
- Automatic—Dynatrace chooses an appropriate location
- Hidden—no legend is displayed
- Bottom—the legend is displayed along the bottom of the visualization
- Right—the legend is displayed on the right side of the visualization
Vertical layout—Determines the orientation of the chart:
- Horizontal—the bars are oriented horizontally, from left to right
- Vertical—the bars are oriented vertically, from bottom to top
Category tick label layout—specifies the orientation of the category tick labels:
- Horizontal—the category tick labels are oriented horizontally, from left to right
- Vertical—the category tick labels are oriented vertically, from bottom to top

Overrides

Category colors—to override a category color, select from the list.

Query limits

Use the Query limits section to check and adjust the Grail query limits per notebook section or dashboard tile. These settings determine the maximum limits when fetching data. Exceeding any limit will generate a warning.

Dashboard sections and notebook tiles created in Dynatrace earlier than version 1.296 are not affected. Those existing tiles/sections will return the same results as before.

Read data limit (GB)

The limit in gigabytes for the amount of data that will be scanned during a read.

Record limit

The maximum number of result records that this query will return. Default: 1,000 records. To see more records, you need to increase the value of Record limit.

If your query has no limit, such as
```
fetch logs
```
the value of Record limit is applied. By default, you will see up to 1,000 records.
If your query also includes a limit, such as
```
fetch logs
| limit 2000
```
the lower of the two values (either limit in your query, or Record limit in the web UI) is applied.

In the example above, you would still see only 1,000 records unless you increased the value of Record limit.

Result size limit

The maximum number of result bytes that this query will return. For better performance with typical queries and smaller documents, the default is set to 1 MB.

Sampling (Logs and Spans only)

Results in the selection of a subset of Log or Span records.

Thresholds

Configure thresholds

To configure thresholds in a dashboard or notebook visualization

Select to edit the visualization tile.
Select Thresholds.
In Dashboards, select the Visual tab in the side panel, and then select Thresholds.
In Notebooks, select Thresholds in the side panel.
Select Threshold.
Define the thresholds. For each range:
- Select a color to display for that range
- Select the operator to define the threshold for that range
- Enter a static value to compare (using the selected operator) with the returned value
- Enter a label to associate with the defined range.
  - Labels apply only to charts with a Y axis, such as timeseries charts and the categorical bar chart.
  - Labels can't be defined for tables and the single value chart.

This example uses a bar chart, but the options apply to other visualizations.

In Dashboards, create a dashboard.
Select and, in the Snippets section of the menu, select Metrics > Chart top 10 hosts by CPU usage.
In the section edit panel, select the Visual tab and select Bar.
Select Thresholds.
Select Threshold.

An empty set of threshold fields is displayed.
Define the thresholds for the displayed metric. You can observe your changes in the Y axis of the chart.

In this example, we define three ranges of CPU usage with corresponding colors and labels.

You can see the ranges displayed on the Y-axis and in the tooltip.

To reset to defaults (discard threshold settings), select the trash can next to the item.

Edit thresholds

Select to edit the visualization tile.
Select Thresholds.
In Dashboards, select the Visual tab in the side panel, and then select Thresholds.
In Notebooks, select Thresholds in the side panel.
From this point, you can do the following (expand rows for details):

To add thresholds (if the selected visualization supports additional thresholds), select Threshold.

To turn off (hide) existing thresholds, use the switch. No settings are lost. You can turn them back on if you change your mind.

To delete existing thresholds, select the trash can .

To change existing threshold settings, just edit the fields.

To add a range to existing thresholds, select Add range.

To delete a range from existing thresholds, select the delete button in that row.

Units and formats

To override the default units and formats in a dashboard or notebook visualization

Select to edit the visualization tile.
Select the Visual tab.
Select Units and formats.
Select Override.
Select Override
In the dropdown list, select the item for which you want to add a unit override.
This is a numeric column of the underlying DQL result, so it varies according to the query. For example:
A fetch events query returns events. The dropdown list here lets you select a numeric field (such as transfer_size) from the results.
A timeseries avg(dt.host.cpu.usage) query returns a single timeseries for avg(dt.host.cpu.usage). That timeseries is then the only selectable option in the list.
Define the override.
- Default unit: The base unit in which the values were captured. It's None if it was not included in the DQL result, or its automatically defined by the unit passed from the DQL result. This field doesn't lead to any conversion.
- Displayed unit: Once you define a default unit, you can use Displayed unit for conversion. For example, if the DQL result defined your numeric value in the result as Bytes, Displayed unit now offers a suitable list of byte conversions such as Kilobyte and Megabyte. Unlike the Default unit, the Displayed unit is always a numeric conversion.
- Decimals displays the default number of decimals (degree of precision) to display. To see it in action, change the Decimals selection and observe the change in the visualization.
- Suffix displays the suffix to display after the unit. To see it in action, enter a string and observe the change in the visualization. When you don't find the unit you're looking for, you can use Suffix to display the desired unit.
Turn on Abbreviate large numbers if you want to display large figures in abbreviated form. For example, 1053 becomes 1.1K.

To reset to defaults (discard override settings for the selected item), select the trash can next to the item.

This example uses a line chart, but the options apply to other visualizations.

In Dashboards, create a dashboard.
Select and, in the Snippets section of the menu, select Metrics > Chart average CPU across all hosts.
In the section edit panel, select the Visual tab and select Line.
Select Units and formats.
Select Override.
In the dropdown list, select the metric for which you want to add an override. There's only one metric to select in this example.
Define the override for the displayed metric. You can observe your changes in the Y-axis of the chart.
- Default unit displays Percent (%), which is the default unit for the selected metric. Try a different setting, such as One to instead display the result as a fraction of 1.
- Displayed unit displays Auto. You can change it to a different unit, such as One to instead display the result as a fraction of 1.
  
  Only linear and static conversions are supported. For example, you cannot convert Degree Celsius(°C) into Degree Fahrenheit(°F), or convert Usd(US$) into Eur(€).
- Decimals displays the default number of decimal points (degree of precision) to display. To see it in action, change the Decimals selection and observe the change in the visualization.
  
  For example, change this:
  
  To this:
- Suffix displays the optional suffix to display after the unit. To see it in action, enter a string and observe the change in the visualization.

To reset to defaults (discard override settings for the selected metric), select the trash can next to the metric.