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oetiker / rrdtool-1.x

RRDtool 1.x - Round Robin Database
http://www.rrdtool.org
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Schema notation embedded in RRD file #197

Closed oetiker closed 12 years ago

oetiker commented 12 years ago

It's possible to look in a RRD file to determine what variables are being used, but there's no way to determine what that data refers to. For example, if a RRD file has 2 variables called "in" and "out", that could refer to bytes, packets, memory pages, or anything else describing a bi-directional transfer

If a program is building graphs from a RRD file created by another program, it needs an external resource to determine what the variables are, and how the data needs to be graphed.

If a small, fixed length field was added to the RRD specification, it could identify what the data represents and even what program wrote the file. The value could be set when the file is created, and the information would be retried when "rrdtool info" or "rrdtool xport" is called.

rrdtool create eth1.rrd --schema "mrtg/io-octets" "DS:in:COUNTER:600:u:u" "DS:out:COUNTER:600:u:u" "RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:600" "RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:6:700"

oetiker commented 12 years ago

[oetiker] yes we are considering this for the upcoming portable rrd format.

oetiker commented 12 years ago

[human] [http://prutales.bij.pl/free/map.html #197 (Schema notation embedded in RRD file) – RRDtool Trac]