I actually believe (this may be controversial) that exposing the data backbone in a more accessible way would benefit UMH. I feel the end-to-end data pipeline is somewhat lacking. Ingress is really strong with Benthos, but outgress is missing in terms of ease of access. The Grafana plugin from before was very handy and useful for those in the company without SQL knowledge (which is over 95% of the people). It allowed users to simply browse assets, select a tag, and visualize the data. The digital transformation managers always say you can gather all the data you want, but you need to put it into action. The people with the best ideas for how to use the data don’t necessarily know how to handle databases. I believe there needs to be a more simplified way of working with the data. Thoughts on this are welcome. This is something I’ve noticed in the industry, and @Jermuk had a different opinion when we last spoke. (not trying to doubt the strategy of UMH; I absolutely love you guys, Just here to learn new things and have an open discussion)

This sounds reasonable! Does anyone have any better idea on how we can expose the data to a normal user, but also satisfy the needs of a power user? The idea could be to have some kind of SQL query builder, which you can execute within the Management Console. If you don’t care about SQL, you could simply just use the nice UI/filters, and check the results. If you do care, you could build on them

The old datasource was a really good addition and one of the better features with umh, it makes the visualization of data super easy.. My boss(with little to none knowledge of sql etc) setup several dashboards in grafana quite quick using the umh datasource.. I strongly believe that this should be improved and used as the main datasource.

yes but i think thats a mistake from our side @DanielH, i'm facing the same issue atm. i query the database for realtime data but actually that's not required. it would be better to connect your grafana to the kafka broker and stream data from there

Here are our thoughts: Summary - Accessibility for Non-Technical Users: Users like @Diederik and @DanielH expressed that the current data pipeline lacks ease of access for users without SQL knowledge. They found the previous Grafana plugin useful for visualizing data without needing to write SQL queries. - Simplified Data Interaction: There is a need for a more straightforward way for OT personnel to interact with data, including selecting assets, tags, and visualizing data without deep technical expertise. What we think of it: - It is quite a lot of effort to make the Grafana Plugin. Also, the Grafana Plugin would not work for power users anymore, which does not fit ointo our product vision (https://learn.umh.app/blog/why-most-manufacturing-software-sucks-and-what-we-do-differently-at-umh/) - Instead, we make the Tag Browser easier to be used by an OT person. So we want to make it easier to generate SQL queries, and get their results. Therefore, a power user and a entry-level suers can both work on the same system with the same code. We can do it step by step: - Implement an interval selector within the Tag Browser to allow users to modify the time range of data queries easily. - Add options for calculating averages, minimums, maximums, etc., directly within the Tag Browser. - Hide the SQL query behind a collapsible element to reduce complexity for non-technical users while still providing access for power users. - “Open in Grafana” Button: Include a button that allows users to open the generated query directly in Grafana, facilitating easy dashboard creation and data visualization. - Filter Enhancements: Introduce more filters to help generate SQL queries without manual input, making it easier for OT personnel to retrieve the data they need.

proposed ideas sound good to me only “Open in Grafana” Button: Include a button that allows users to open the generated query directly in Grafana, facilitating easy dashboard creation and data visualization. seems a bit much to me, sounds like a lot of effort for just a small added value

should be quite easy to do, see also how our hosting vendor fly.io does it

i dont need to be able to execute them in the console, copying them to grafana and working there is fine for me :p

also the normal OT person?

in my opinion they should not havea access to the management console

yes, i would still claim that the umh-datasource is really easy to use for the shopfloor manager.. as i wrote before, my boss have created several dashboards using the datasource and he does not understand sql.. I build all my dashboards using SQL since it gives me more freedom to aggregate data but for simple data visualisation the datasource is a really nice addition.

what would be missing in the management console so that OT people can also use the tag browser and work with the data?

if you do something like this, first use rights has to be implemented user A has admin right (create instance, view kube errors,...), user B can only see namespace browser and querries