SigNoz: Avoid Confusion With Number Panel Query Warnings

Hey everyone, let's dive into a common hiccup we've seen with the SigNoz number panel that can leave you scratching your head. We're talking about those moments when you're setting up a dashboard and, whoops, you've accidentally left multiple queries enabled on a single number panel. This often happens when users are experimenting with formula queries. They create this awesome, complex formula to display a specific metric, but then, forget to disable the other, simpler queries that were there before. The result? The panel stubbornly shows the value of just one of those old queries, completely ignoring your carefully crafted formula. Talk about confusing, right? It’s like trying to read a book with half the pages ripped out – you just don’t get the full picture, and it can lead to some serious misinterpretations of your data. This might seem like a small thing, but in the world of monitoring and observability, precision is key. Misinterpreting a metric on your dashboard can lead to making the wrong decisions, which, down the line, could impact performance, user experience, or even your bottom line. So, we're looking into ways to make this a bit more foolproof, adding a warning to flag these situations. Our goal here is to ensure that when you’re building your dashboards, especially with the power and flexibility of SigNoz, you have the clearest possible view of your system's health and performance. We want to empower you to make informed decisions based on accurate, reliable data, and that starts with making the tools intuitive and less prone to user error. This article is all about exploring that specific issue, why it happens, and how we're thinking about addressing it to make your SigNoz experience even smoother.

Understanding the Problem: The Double (or Triple!) Query Dilemma

So, let's break down this pesky issue with the SigNoz number panel, guys. Imagine you're deep in dashboard creation mode, right? You’ve got your metrics laid out, and you decide you need a specific, calculated value for your number panel. You head into the query editor, maybe you’re setting up a formula like A / B to get a ratio, or perhaps you’re averaging a few different data points. This is where the power of SigNoz really shines – its flexibility allows you to combine and transform data in really insightful ways. Now, the number panel itself is designed to display a single, aggregated value. You pick your primary query, let's call it Query A, and you set up your formula based on it. Here's the sneaky part: sometimes, when you're done crafting your formula, you might have other queries (let's say Query B, Query C, etc.) that were already there, or perhaps you were testing them out. It’s super easy to get caught up in the process and simply forget to disable or delete those other queries. They’re still technically enabled in the panel's configuration. What SigNoz does in this scenario is it tries its best to make sense of it all. By default, if you have multiple queries enabled, it often defaults to showing the result of the first enabled query (often labeled 'A'). So, even though you built this amazing formula, the panel shows you a raw number from an older, perhaps irrelevant query. This is where the confusion kicks in big time. You’re looking at your dashboard, expecting to see your calculated ratio, but instead, you see a simple count, or some other metric that was just sitting there. It’s a classic case of the system doing exactly what you told it to do, but not what you intended it to do because of a small oversight. The implications here can be quite significant. If you’re monitoring critical systems, a wrongly displayed metric can lead to a cascade of bad decisions. Maybe you see a high error rate that isn’t actually the one you’re tracking, and you start a fire drill. Or perhaps you see a low throughput that isn’t your main concern, and you miss a genuine bottleneck elsewhere. It's these small details that can have a big impact on how effectively you can use SigNoz to manage your systems. The goal is to make the user interface guide you towards correct usage, preventing these kinds of errors before they even happen, ensuring your dashboards are always a true reflection of your system's performance.

Why This Happens: A Tale of Two Queries (or More)

Let's get into the nitty-gritty of why this situation pops up so often in SigNoz. At its core, it's a usability challenge, stemming from the way users interact with dashboards and the underlying query configurations. When you add a number panel to a SigNoz dashboard, you're essentially giving it instructions on what data to fetch and how to display it. You can add multiple queries to a single panel, which is incredibly powerful. Think of it like stacking LEGO bricks; each query is a brick, and you can arrange them to build something complex. For instance, you might want to show the total number of requests (Query A), the number of successful requests (Query B), and the number of failed requests (Query C) all in one glance. But often, you want to calculate something from these, like the success rate, which would be B / A * 100. To do this, you'd typically set up Query A and Query B, and then create a new query, let’s call it Query D, which is a formula based on A and B. Now, the crucial step that often gets missed is disabling or deleting the original Query A and Query B once Query D is established and set as the primary display. If Query A is still enabled and set to be displayed, the panel will just show the raw value of Query A, ignoring your fancy formula in Query D. This oversight happens for a few reasons, guys. Firstly, the interface, while powerful, can become a bit dense when you're managing multiple queries. It's easy to click 'Add Query' and forget to go back and clean up the ones you no longer need for direct display. Secondly, users might be in a hurry, or they might be new to SigNoz and not fully grasp the implications of having multiple queries enabled simultaneously. They might think that simply creating the formula query is enough, without realizing the default display behavior. Thirdly, there’s the iterative nature of dashboard building. You might add Query A, then realize you need Query B, then decide to create a formula using both. In this process, the older queries can become almost like