Google has released a Log Analytics query builder, a new tool designed to ease access to observability data in Google Cloud.

Log Analytics can be used to query logs, other telemetry types, and transactional or business datasets from BigQuery. Google says that for many users, writing SQL queries is a significant hurdle, and this is especially true when dealing with critical log data.

The problem is that information is often nested in JSON format with varying schemas, requiring expert knowledge of how SQL works to extract the data. This can slow down troubleshooting and problem diagnostics because of the time and effort required to write effective SQL. 

The new Log Analytics query builder aims to make this process easier. Its features start with the ability to create SQL to search all fields: The user simply pastes an error message or string to search across all their data and quickly pinpoint the source of an issue.

There's a log schema preview that also provides inferred JSON key and value previews, and easier general JSON handling because the query builder automatically discovers and suggests JSON schemas and values. This allows the user to select and extract data without having to use commands such as JSON_VALUE, JSON_EXTRACT and CAST.

The UI also provides intelligent values for fields and filters, derived directly from your dataset, even including the nested fields in JSON. The UI also provides filtering and aggregation options, so users can apply common SQL operators, aggregations such as counts, mean, and percentiles. Creation of group-by clauses is also supported through the UI.

Other improvements include the ability to work with log scopes, so you can apply a query to a log scope by selecting the log scope from the view/scope picker. There's also a real-time SQL preview that updates as you build your query in the UI. You can switch to the code editor at any time to fine-tune your query; and a visualization dashboard that shows your query results and allows you to save them to a dashboard. 

Log Analytics Query Builder is available now.

More Information

Log Analytics Query Builder

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