Should use Names or IDs as label values?

[Srihari Jonnalagadda]

Hi. I’m quite new to Prometheus. I want to store metrics based on an 'ID' property (name can be editable) but wish to provide user a friendly name of the respective entity in the dashboard. e.g. You track metrics by department with an internal Department ID but wish to use the department name in the dashboard showing department metrics. Should we map ID -> Name outside prometheus after querying?

Thanks in advance and stay safe!

[Ben Kochie]

It's completely fine to use names in label values. `department="Some Nice People"` is a completely normal and valid thing to do.

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 2:59 PM Srihari Jonnalagadda <srihari.jo...@hyscale.io> wrote:

Hi. I’m quite new to Prometheus. I want to store metrics based on an 'ID' property (name can be editable) but wish to provide user a friendly name of the respective entity in the dashboard. e.g. You track metrics by department with an internal Department ID but wish to use the department name in the dashboard showing department metrics. Should we map ID -> Name outside prometheus after querying?

Thanks in advance and stay safe!

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[Srihari Jonnalagadda]

Thanks for the prompt reply. Does that mean we shouldn’t be modifying dept name once it has been created. what if we have department name editable?

[Ben Kochie]

This will create new time-series. Allowing edits is up to you.

Typically, metrics are identified by service discovery.

I recommend reading the instrumentation and naming best practices guides in the Prometheus documentation.

https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/naming/

https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/instrumentation/

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 3:33 PM Srihari Jonnalagadda <srihari.jo...@hyscale.io> wrote:

Thanks for the prompt reply. Does that mean we shouldn’t be modifying dept name once it has been created. what if we have department name editable?

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[Srihari Jonnalagadda]

Ya It creates a new time series. I don’t want to split up the data. So thats the reason I have chosen the ID(dept-1) instead of name(Some Nice People) as a label value. But then stuck with this question “how to provide user friendly name(Some Nice People) in the query responses?”

[Brian Candler]

On Sunday, 7 June 2020 14:54:31 UTC+1, Srihari Jonnalagadda wrote:

Ya It creates a new time series. I don’t want to split up the data. So thats the reason I have chosen the ID(dept-1) instead of name(Some Nice People) as a label value. But then stuck with this question “how to provide user friendly name(Some Nice People) in the query responses?”

By joining against another timeseries which adds the user-visible label - but this does make your queries longer and more complex.

https://www.robustperception.io/how-to-have-labels-for-machine-roles

https://www.robustperception.io/exposing-the-software-version-to-prometheus

https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/querying/operators/#many-to-one-and-one-to-many-vector-matches 

[Srihari Jonnalagadda]

Ya. Had a look at these. This makes queries more complex. That is why I just want to confirm if I’m going the wrong way and wanted to know the recommended approach if any. Also want to check what people prefer names or IDs.