New Features and Updates in the ChaosSearch UI

This topic provides an overview of improvements and changes within the user interface, with some links to updated topics and more information, and a summary of the terminology updates.

Improved Tab Organization and Flow

The main tabs of the ChaosSearch interface are renamed and reorganized to help streamline the workflow for configuration. For administrative users, the tabs are now as follows:

• Storage -- The same tab to access the cloud-storage buckets configured for the system, and a listing of object groups that are created for files in each bucket. You start object group creation in this tab, but object group management operations have moved to Groups.
• Groups -- A new tab area that organizes object groups and all of their related information for fields, properties, indexing, intervals, and similar information. Note that the Groups tab is an optional configuration setting. See No Groups Tab? for more information.
• Views -- Formerly the Refinery tab, Views is the pane for creating and managing the views to your indexed data.
• Search Analytics -- Formerly the Analytics tab, this is the access to the embedded OpenSearch Dashboards search and visualization portal.
• SQL Analytics -- A new tab that provides access to the embedded Apache Superset SQL query and visualization portal.
• System Dashboard -- The same tab to access the system management and operations status portal.
• Settings -- The same access by clicking your user account name in the top-right corner.

Storage Tab Updates

As noted above, the Storage tab has been streamlined to focus on the cloud-storage buckets and objects for indexing. Object group management tasks like deleting groups, reviewing properties, and so on are moved to the Groups tab. With Storage, the steps to scan buckets, to review their objects as needed, and to start the Create Object Group process remain the same.

Note that the Create and Start button has been removed from the Create Object Group window. It is best to create the object group, and then to review the group definition and start indexing as a separate step.

Object groups now support snappy-java framing for ingest/indexing. A new SNAPPY-JAVA compression option is available during object group creation. See Creating Object Groups.

Groups Tab Updates

The Groups tab is new, and it organizes all the tasks relating to the management of groups and group-related resources and information. You can use the search field in the left frame to quickly search for and filter on a group name string.

The top-level groups page has been updated to show a summary list of the groups and information such as the bucket that holds the object files indexed by the group, indexing status, buttons to manage indexing for one or more groups, and links to drill down to the detailed properties for a group or to the parent bucket of the objects.

When you select a group to display the details, the Group > Properties window opens:

The Properties area has many of the same features as the former Group Contents, but with some differences. One main difference is that the list of indexed data fields has moved to its own new tab called Fields.

📘

Terminology Update: The term fields is used for indexed data schema members

In this new interface, the term field represents a value or member of the indexed data for the group. In the past, field and column were ued somewhat interchangeably in the UI. The term field now refers to a uniquely named information component in the indexed data, which usually becomes a column in the Refinery view schema.

Other term and tab changes within the Groups area:

• Target Workers (formerly Target Active Index) -- A setting used by ChaosSearch to override, when needed, the number of workers allocated for indexing for the group.
• Isolation Key and Isolation (formerly Partition Key and Partitions) -- A feature to separate the indexed data for a group based on keys derived from object pathname regular expressions.
• Intervals (formerly Indexes) -- The daily indexing statistics files created for the object group.

The Fields tab is a focused area for all of the fields found in the indexed cloud storage log and event files for the object group.

In the Fields tab, you can review the names of the fields found in the object group source files and indexed, and the data type of each field.

The Events tab is the same, and the Intervals, Isolation, and Objects tabs have new names and some cleaner list displays, but they have the same functions as the former Indexes, Partitions, and File View tabs.

Views Tab

The Views tab (formerly the Refinery tab) is renamed to improve the usability for finding and creating views in that area. The pages have some improved naming and tab flows, but the functions and general workflows are the same.

Within the Views page, there are some term and label changes for Intervals (instead of Indexes), the Properties tab (formerly View Summary), and now uses the term Columns to refer to the parts of the view schema (instead of Index Structure).

Search Analytics Tab

The Search Analytics tab (formerly Analytics) provides access to an embedded version of OpenSearch Dashboards, which is the visualization application from the OpenSearch Project. The foundation of OpenSearch Dashboards begins with the Kibana 7.10.2 open-source version, and many of the UIs and features are similar. The Search Analytics defaults to opens the Discover feature so that you can select a view and start searching for your key data insights.

The Plugins > Query Workbench feature connects you to a SQL querying interface using the SQL Analytics tools such as the SQL Editor.

SQL Analytics Tab

The SQL Analytics tab is a new optional portal in the ChaosSearch interface. It opens an embedded Apache Superset that you can use to run SQL queries against your Refinery views, and you can create charts and dashboards for visual analysis with the indexed data. With SQL Analytics, users have an alternative to the OpenSearch Dashboards search capabilities, or they can use both to get the right business insights from the same views and Chaos Index data.

👍

SQL Analytics Option

The SQL Analytics tab is an option and present on systems where this feature is enabled for the user deployment. If your cluster does not have the SQL Analytics tab and you want to use SQL queries and Superset, contact your ChaosSearch Customer Success representative.

Other UI and Workflow Changes

General Changes

• In several create dialog boxes, the Submit button has been replaced by Save for clarity and more consistent controls.

Create Object Group Changes

The Create Object Group workflow has been updated with naming changes to be consistent with the with the terms like intervals, partitions, and fields. So, for example:

• The Advanced Filtering button has replaced Object Filter, and now opens the Advanced Object Filtering window.
• The data separation controls are now Isolate By and you choose isolation keys.
• The Field Overrides button has replaced Schema Filter.
• Many references to "column" in the object group window have changed to field.

Static Object Group Changes

New static object groups use an improved discover process to scan for and identify the cloud-storage files to index. With this change, the discover process applies a stricter set of rules for the object group's regex filter to locate the matching cloud-storage objects to index. As a result, static indexing is faster and the index content more aligned with the group's regular expression definition.

The match rules take effect when new static object groups are created; previously created static object groups continue to use the former, wider matching rules that were in place when those groups were created. To determine whether a static object group uses the new matching rules, click the Predicate field link for the group, and look for the "strict": true setting for the regex definition. Note that this setting will appear in new Live Index object groups as well for a consistent group structure, but the setting is meaningful only for static object groups.

Create View Changes

The Create View workflow is the same, but there are some naming and label updates for consistency with the new view terms, for example:

• Many references to the term "index" have changed to "interval", and "field" to "column."
• References to "partitions" and "partition keys" have changed to "isolation" and "isolation keys".