InfluxDB enables efficient time-series data storage and retrieval and Grafana is a platform to create and share interactive, customizable dashboards. Tags, the metadata for sorting and grouping, are often not human readable and need enrichment. A simple example is a deviceid of a sensor which is stored in the database but you want to present the location or it’s nickname.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The standard solution is to centrally maintain a table with the extra metadata that is combined in the query and adds the needed datapoints to present in the dashboard. However InfluxDB is not like a traditional SQL database and finding no solutions on the internet it seemed too hard to realise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution advised by Grafana and in forums is to add Transformations in Grafana to manipulate and enrich the metadata. These transformations need to be added to each dashboard and need to be repeated for each textstring that you want to add. It requires a lot of maintenance, leading to a higher chance of introducing errors and inconsistencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, I succeeded to combine InfluxDB data with metadata from a MYSQL database. Let’s first give you the example and explain the important parts so you can adjust it to your situation. In Grafana select as Data source “Influx-DB-Flux” and paste the code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n