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Sonia Gupta / Developer Advocate
Introduction to InfluxDB
2.0 and Your First Flux
Query

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.2
Agenda
Basic Concepts
● Brief Overview of New Features in InfluxDB 2.0
● What is Flux?
Usage
● Installing InfluxDB 2.0
● Building a basic flux query
● Using Flux in the 2.0 UI and Chronograf in 1.7

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1.x and The TICK Stack

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.4
InfluxDB: The Modern Time Series Database
• Time-series database built from the
ground up to handle high write &
query loads
• Custom high performance data
store written specifically for time-
stamped data, (DevOps
monitoring, application metrics, IoT
sensor data, & real-time analytics)
• Offers a SQL-like query language
for interacting with data (InfluxQL)
• Now offers Flux for interacting with
data!

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.5
● It was hard to add feature requests to InfluxQL, Flux now has more
functionality than InfluxQL.
● TICK Script difficult to learn and debug.
● Creating a single binary means a better user experience when the UI
is part of the database.
Why develop Flux and InfluxDB 2.0?

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InfluxDB 2.0

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.7
● The UI is very different. You have a wizard to build out scripts in 1.x,
whereas you have a visual query builder in 2.0.
● Changed visualizations, can switch between them using dropdown
instead of going to a separate page.
● Dedicated API layer within the system so the UI works against that
layer, and it’s the same between OSS, Cloud, and Enterprise.
What’s New in InfluxDB 2.0

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.8
● Single Binary - don’t need to deploy external software if you don’t want to.
● Native Prometheus endpoint that exposes our metrics in Prometheus data format -
localhost:9999/metrics
● Tasks are a brand new concept - Flux queries that can be scheduled, can be used to
analyze data over period of time similar to CQs.
● Tokens - you can give access to third party systems to write or read data from the system.
What’s New in InfluxDB 2.0

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.9
● Organizations are a workspace for your team to share dashboards
and queries, as well as a bucket.
● Telegraf agent configuration in the UI itself.
● Can upload data in Line Protocol from the browser.
What’s New in InfluxDB 2.0

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Demo of InfluxDB 2.0

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Flux

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.12
Flux is a functional data scripting and query language
• Written to be:
– Useable
• easy to learn
– Readable
• developers read more code than we write
– Composeable
• developers can build onto the language
– Testable
• queries are code
– Contributable
• open source contributions matter
– Shareable
• developers read more code than we write
– Composeable
What Is Flux?Flux?

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.13
■ Flux is an alternative to InfluxQL with additional
functionality like:
● Joins
● Math across measurements
● Sort by any column
● Pivot
● Histograms
● Covariance
• Reference: https://docs.influxdata.com/flux/v0.7/introduction/flux-vs-influxql/#influxql-and-flux-parity
■ developers read more code than we write
○ Composeable
Flux and InfluxQL

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.14
• Key terms and terminology
– Bucket: Named data source with retention policy
– Pipe-forward operator: chain operations together, |>
– Table: data is returned in annotated CSVs, represented as tables
– Group Key: list of columns for which every row in the table has the
same value
• Reference:https://docs.influxdata.com/flux/v0.7/introduction/getting-started/
Concepts

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Basic Flux Queries

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.16
• Every Flux query needs:
– data source
– time range
– data filters
Basic Flux Queries

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© 2019 InfluxData. All rights reserved.17
Basic Flux Queries
Step 1:
Data Source
from(bucket:"telegraf/autogen")
Reference:
data source
database retention policy

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© 2019 InfluxData. All rights reserved.18
Basic Flux Queries
Step 2:
Time Range
from(bucket:"telegraf/autogen")
|> range(start: -1h)
relative time range

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© 2019 InfluxData. All rights reserved.19
Basic Flux Queries
Step 3:
Data Filters
from(bucket:"telegraf/autogen")
|> range(start: -1h)
|> filter(fn: (r) =>
r.measurement == “cpu”
relative time range
Data Filters

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© 2019 InfluxData. All rights reserved.20
Basic Flux Queries
• Every Flux query needs:
– data source
– time range
– data filters
from(bucket:"telegraf/autogen")
|> range(start: -1h)
|> filter(fn: (r) =>
r.measurement == “cpu” AND
r.field == “usage_system” AND
r.cpu == “cpu_total”

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© 2019 InfluxData. All rights reserved.21
Basic Flux Queries - Note
• Use Flux’s yield() function to output the filtered tables as the result of the
query
• Chronograf and Influx CLI automatically assume a yield()
from(bucket:"telegraf/autogen")
|> range(start: -1h)
|> filter(fn: (r) =>
r.measurement == “cpu” AND
r.field == “usage_system” AND
r.cpu == “cpu_total”
|> yield()

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.22
Flux functions can be split across four major boundaries:
1) Input functions (read from a source like InfluxDB)
2) Functions that combine or split apart tables in the resulting
stream (group, join, window)
3) Functions that get applied to each table in a stream (aggregates,
selectors, sorting)
4) Output functions that send the result to a data sync
• developers read more code than we write
– Composeable
Four Major Boundaries

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.23
• Input
– from()
• Output
– yield()
• Transformation
– aggregates
• mean(), count(), etc
– selectors
• first(), last(), max(), min(), etc
– many more
• Miscellaneous
– systemTime()
• Custom
• developers read more code than we write
– Composeable
• developers can build onto the language
Flux Functions

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Flux in the CLI

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© 2019 InfluxData. All rights reserved.25
CLI in “Flux” mode
Any Flux query can be executed in the REPL
$ ./influx repl -o <organization name>

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© 2019 InfluxData. All rights reserved.26
CLI in “Flux” mode
Any Flux query can be executed in the REPL
$> from(bucket:"telegraf/autogen")|> range(start: -15m)|> filter(fn: (r) => r._measurement == "cpu")

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Demo of Flux in the 2.0 UI

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Demo of Flux in 1.7

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© 2018 InfluxData. All rights reserved.29
Start with Flux
Installation
● Flux is packaged with InfluxDB v1.7+ without further installation needed
● InfluxData Sandbox (Docker container)
● Flux is in technical preview (no prod)
InfluxDB Configuration
● Set `flux-enabled = true`
Help
● https://community.influxdata.com/c/fluxlang

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Thank You!