Once you create a query you can use charts or maps to visualize that data in notebooks, dashboards and alerts (alerts only support line charts).

Lightstep offers the following visualizations:

  • Line chart: Available for all data
    Displays a line that connects the charted values.Line chart

  • Heatmap Available for span latency and distribution-type metric data in dashboards and notebooks. Multiple queries are not supported.
    Heatmaps allow you to see the distribution of values over time. Unlike a line chart, you can see the number of data points for a particular value, at a particular point in time. Color saturation in the map represents the amount of data points - the darker the color, the more data points for that value, at the point in time.

    For example, in the following heatmap, you can see that there are 300 points with a value between 500ms and 600ms around 9:10 am. Heatmap with many data points

    But starting at around 9:18 am, the distribution of data points shifts. There are now a number of points in the higher range of latency and fewer data points at the lower range (many of the dark blue cells changed to a lighter blue). The legend on the right shows the range of color values. Heatmap change

  • Bar chart: Available for metric data in dashboards and notebooks
    Displays a bar for the value at a given time point. Bar charts are good for displaying discrete values, like the number of requests.Bar chart

  • Area chart: Available for metric data in dashboards and notebooks
    Displays a shaded area for the value. Area charts are helpful when you’re charting more than one metric.Area chart

  • Big number: Available for metric data dashboards and notebooks
    Displays an aggregated value over time as a number. Big number charts are useful when you only need to know the current value of a metric and don’t expect to investigate any changes. When creating a big number chart, note the following:

    • Click under the number to add a subtitle.
    • Because a big number chart displays a single value, you can not group by an attribute. If you use more than one metric for your chart, you need to combine them using a formula. Big number chart

  • Dependency map: Available for span data in dashboards and notebooks. Multiple queries are not supported.
    Displays a map showing services (and optionally operations) dependent on the queried data. You can query on services, operations and other attributes.Dependency map Learn more about dependency maps.