pmRegisterDerived - Man Page

register a global derived metric name and definition

C Synopsis

#include <pcp/pmapi.h>

char *pmRegisterDerived(char *name, char *expr);
int pmRegisterDerivedMetric(char *name, char *expr, char **errmsg);

cc ... -lpcp

Description

Derived metrics provide a way of extending the Performance Metrics Name Space (PMNS) with new metrics defined at the PCP client-side using expressions over the existing performance metrics.

Typical uses would be to aggregate a number of similar metrics to provide a higher-level summary metric or to support the “delta V over delta V” class of metrics that are not possible in the base data semantics of PCP. An example of the latter class would be the average I/O size, defined as

delta(disk.dev.total_bytes) / delta(disk.dev.total)

where both of the disk.dev metrics are counters, and what is required is to sample both metrics, compute the difference between the current and previous values and then calculate the ratio of these differences.

The arguments to pmRegisterDerived are the name of the new derived metric and expr is an expression defining how the values of name should be computed.

pmRegisterDerivedMetric is the exact functional equivalent to pmRegisterDerived except that it provides a simplified model of error handling, where a formatted message is returned via the errmsg parameter.

Syntactic checking is performed at the time pmRegisterDerived is called, but semantic checking is deferred until each new PMAPI context is created with pmNewContext(3) or re-established with pmReconnectContext(3), at which time the PMNS and metadata is available to allow semantic checking and the metadata of the derived metrics to be determined.

If pmRegisterDerived is called after one or more PMAPI contexts has been opened, then the newly registered metrics will be avaiable in those contexts, however the more normal use would be to make all calls to pmRegisterDerived (possibly via pmLoadDerivedConfig(3)) or pmRegisterDerivedMetric before calling pmNewContext(3).

All of the defined global derived metrics are available in all PMAPI contexts.

It is also possible to define per-context derived metrics once a PMAPI context has been establised.  These derived metrics are private to the context in which they are defined using the allied routines pmAddDerived(3) and pmAddDerivedMetric(3).

name should follow the syntactic rules for the names of performance metrics, namely one or more components separated with a dot (“.”), and each component must begin with an alphabetic followed by zero or more characters drawn from the alphabetics, numerics and underscore (“_”). For more details, refer to PCPIntro(1) and PMNS(5).

name must be unique across all derived metrics and should not match the name of any regular metric in the PMNS.  It is acceptable for name to share some part of its prefix with an existing subtree of the PMNS, e.g. the average I/O size metric above could be named disk.dev.avgsz which would place it amongst the other disk.dev metrics in the PMNS. Alternatively, derived metrics could populate their own subtree of the PMNS, e.g. the average I/O size metric above could be named my.summary.disk.avgsz.

The expression expr follows these syntactic rules:

Semantic Checks and Rules

There are a number of conversions required to determine the metadata for a derived metric and to ensure the semantics of the expressions are sound.

In an arithmetic expression or a relational expression, if the semantics of both operands is not a counter (i.e. PM_SEM_INSTANT or PM_SEM_DISCRETE) then the result will have semantics PM_SEM_INSTANT unless both operands are PM_SEM_DISCRETE in which case the result is also PM_SEM_DISCRETE.

For an arithmetic expression, the dimension of each operand must be the same. For a relational expression, the dimension of each operand must be the same, except that numeric constants (with no dimension) are allowed, e.g. in the expression network.interface.in.drops > 0 .

To prevent arbitrary and non-sensical combinations some restrictions apply to expressions that combine metrics with counter semantics to produce a result with counter semantics. For an arithmetic expression, if both operands have the semantics of a counter, then only addition or subtraction is allowed, or if the left operand is a counter and the right operand is not, then only multiplication or division are allowed, or if the left operand is not a counter and the right operand is a counter, then only multiplication is allowed.

Because relational expressions use the current value only and produce a result that is not a counter, either or both operands of a relational expression may be counters.

The mapping of the pmUnits of the metadata uses the following rules:

Scale conversion involves division if the dimension is positive else multiplication if the dimension is negative. If scale conversion is applied to either of the operands, the result is promoted to type PM_TYPE_DOUBLE.

Putting all of this together in an example, consider the derived metric defined as follows:
x = network.interface.speed - delta(network.interface.in.bytes) / delta(sample.milliseconds)
The type, dimension and scale settings would propagate up the expression tree as follows.

ExpressionTypeDimension & ScaleScale Factor(s)
sample.millisecondsDOUBLEmillisec
delta(...)DOUBLEmillisec
network...bytesU64byte
delta(...)U64byte
delta(...) / delta(...)DOUBLEbyte/millisec/1048576 and *1000
network...speedFLOATMbyte/sec
xDOUBLEMbyte/sec

Expressions involving single instance selection or the matchinst function must be associated with underlying metrics that have an instance domain.  These constructors make no sense for singular metrics.

Because semantic checking cannot be done at the time pmRegisterDerived is called, errors found during semantic checking (when any subsequent calls to pmNewContext(3) or pmReconnectContext(3) succeed) are reported using pmprintf(3). These include:

Error: derived metric <name1>: operand: <name2>: <reason>

There was a problem calling pmLookupName(3) to identify the operand metric <name2> used in the definition of the derived metric <name1>.

Error: derived metric <name1>: operand (<name2> [<pmid2>]): <reason>

There was a problem calling pmLookupDesc(3) to identify the operand metric <name2> with PMID <pmid2> used in the definition of the derived metric <name1>.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <operand> : <operand> Different <metadata> for ternary operands

For a ternary expression, the “true” operand and the “false” operand must have exactly the same metadata, so type, semantics, instance domain, and units (dimension and scale).

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <operand> <op> <operand>: Dimensions are not the same

Operands must have the same units (dimension and scale) for each of addition, subtraction, the relational operators and the boolean “and” or “or” operators.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <operand> <op> <operand>: Illegal operator for counter and non-counter

Only multiplication or division are allowed if the left operand has the semantics of a counter and the right operand is not a counter.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <operand> <op> <operand>: Illegal operator for counters

If both operands have the semantics of counter, only addition or subtraction make sense, so multiplication and division are not allowed.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <operand> <op> <operand>: Illegal operator for non-counter and counter

Only multiplication is allowed if the right operand has the semantics of a counter and the left operand is not a counter.

Semantic error: derived metric <metric> <expr> RESCALE <units>: Incompatible dimensions

The parameters <expr> and <units> to the rescale function must have the same dimension along the axes of Time, Space and Count.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: Incorrect time dimension for operand

Rate conversion using the rate() function is only possible for operand metrics with a Time dimension of 0 or 1 (see pmLookupDesc(3)). If the operand metric's Time dimension is 0, then the derived metrics has a value "per second" (Time dimension of -1). If the operand metric's Time dimension is 1, then the derived metrics has a value of time utilization (Time dimension of 0).

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <function>(<operand>): Non-arithmetic operand for function

The unary functions are only defined if the operand has arithmetic type. Similarly the first argument to the rescale function must be of arithmetic type.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <expr> ? ...: Non-arithmetic operand for ternary guard

The first expression for a ternary operator must have an arithmetic type.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: ... - ...: Non-arithmetic operand for unary negation

Unary negation only makes sense if the following expression has an arithmetic type.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <operand> <op> <operand>: Non-arithmetic type for <left-or-right> operand

The binary arithmetic operators are only allowed with operands with an arithmetic type (integer of various sizes and signedness, float or double).

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <operand> <op> <operand>: Non-counter and not dimensionless <left-or-right> operand

For multiplication or division or any of the relational operators, if one of the operands has the semantics of a counter and the other has the semantics of a non-counter (instantaneous or discrete) then the non-counter operand must have no units (dimension and scale).

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <expr> ? <expr> : <expr>: Non-scalar ternary guard with scalar expressions

If the “true” and “false” operands of a ternary expression have a scalar value, then the “guard” expression must also have a scalar value.

Semantic error: derived metric <name>: <expr> <op> <expr>: Operands should have the same instance domain

For all of the binary operators (arithmetic and relational), if both operands have non-scalar values, then they must be defined over the same instance domain.

Expression Evaluation

For the binary arithmetic operators, if either operand must be scaled (e.g. convert bytes to Kbytes) then the result is promoted to PM_TYPE_DOUBLE. Otherwise the type of the result is determined by the types of the operands, as per the following table which is evaluated from top to bottom until a match is found.

Operand TypesOperatorResult Type
either is PM_TYPE_DOUBLEanyPM_TYPE_DOUBLE
anydivisionPM_TYPE_DOUBLE
either is PM_TYPE_FLOATanyPM_TYPE_FLOAT
either is PM_TYPE_U64anyPM_TYPE_U64
either is PM_TYPE_64anyPM_TYPE_64
either is PM_TYPE_U32anyPM_TYPE_U32
otherwise (both are PM_TYPE_32)anyPM_TYPE_32

Caveats

Derived metrics are not available when using pmFetchArchive(3) as this routine does not use a target list of PMIDs that could be remapped (as is done for pmFetch(3)).

There is no pmUnregisterDerived method, so once registered a derived metric persists for the life of the application.

Diagnostics

On success, pmRegisterDerived returns NULL.

If a syntactic error is found at the time of registration, the value returned by pmRegisterDerived is a pointer into expr indicating where the error was found.  To identify what the error was, the application should call pmDerivedErrStr(3) to retrieve the corresponding parser error message.

pmRegisterDerivedMetric returns 0 and errmsg is undefined if the parsing is successful.

If the given expr does not conform to the required syntax pmRegisterDerivedMetric returns -1 and a dynamically allocated error message string in errmsg. The error message is terminated with a newline and includes both the input name and expr, along with an indicator of the position at which the error was detected. e.g.
Error: pmRegisterDerivedMetric("my.disk.rates", ...) syntax error
4rat(disk.dev.read)
   ^

The position indicator line may be followed by an additional diagnostic line describing the nature of the error, when available.

In the case of an error, the caller is responsible for calling free(3) to release the space allocated for errmsg.

See Also

PCPIntro(1), free(3), pmAddDerived(3), pmAddDerivedMetric(3), PMAPI(3), pmDerivedErrStr(3), pmFetch(3), pmLoadDerivedConfig(3), pmNewContext(3), pmprintf(3), pmReconnectContext(3) and PMNS(5).

Referenced By

pcp2elasticsearch(1), pcp2graphite(1), pcp2influxdb(1), pcp2json(1), pcp2spark(1), pcp2xlsx(1), pcp2xml(1), pcp2zabbix(1), pcp-dstat(5), pcp-htop(5), pmAddDerived(3), pmAddDerivedText(3), pmCreateFetchGroup(3), pmDerivedControl(3), pmDerivedErrStr(3), pmiectl(1), pmLoadDerivedConfig(3), pmlogctl(1), pmReconnectContext(3), pmrep(1), pmrep.conf(5).

The man page pmRegisterDerivedMetric(3) is an alias of pmRegisterDerived(3).

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