Use Grafana to query and visualize data

When using the local version of Grafana, you can install the FlightSQL plugin with the grafana-cli CLI or in the Grafana user interface (UI).

• Use grafana-cli
• Use the Grafana UI

Use grafana-cli

Run the following command to install the FlightSQL plugin:

grafana-cli plugins install influxdata-flightsql-datasource

After installing the plugin, you may need to restart your Grafana server.

Use the Grafana UI

1. In the Grafana UI, navigate to Configuration > Plugins.
2. Search for and select the FlightSQL plugin.
3. Click Install.

1. In your Grafana Cloud instance, navigate to Administration > Plugins.
2. Search for and select the FlightSQL plugin.
3. Click Install via grafana.com to navigate to the plugin page.
4. On the plugin page, click Install plugin.

After a moment, Grafana Cloud completes the plugin installation in your Grafana Cloud instance.

1. In your Grafana user interface (UI), navigate to Data Sources.

2. Click Add new data source.

3. Search for and select the FlightSQL plugin.

4. Provide a name for your datasource.

5. Add your connection credentials:

   • Host: Provide the host and port of your Flight SQL client. For InfluxDB Clustered, this is your cluster URL and port 443:

     cluster-host.com:443
     

   • AuthType: Select token.

   • Token: Provide your InfluxDB database token with read access to the databases you want to query.

   • Require TLS/SSL: Enable this toggle.

6. Add connection MetaData. Provide key-value pairs to send to your Flight SQL client.

   InfluxDB Clustered requires your database name:

   • Key: database
   • Value: Database name

7. Click Save & test.

   

   If successful, click Explore to begin querying InfluxDB with Flight SQL and Grafana.

1. In your Grafana user interface (UI), navigate to Data Sources.

2. Click Add new data source.

3. Search for and select the InfluxDB core plugin.

4. Provide a name for your datasource.

5. Under Query Language, select InfluxQL. InfluxDB Clustered does not support Flux.

6. Under HTTP:

   • URL: Provide your InfluxDB cluster URL using the HTTPS protocol:

     https://cluster-host.com
     

7. Under InfluxDB Details:

   • Database: Provide a default database name to query.
   • User: Provide an arbitrary string. This credential is ignored when querying InfluxDB Clustered, but it cannot be empty.
   • Password: Provide an InfluxDB database token with read access to the databases you want to query.

8. Click Save & test.

   

1. Click Explore.
2. In the dropdown, select the FlightSQL data source that you want to query.
3. Use the SQL query form to build your query:
   • FROM: Select the measurement that you want to query.
   • SELECT: Select one or more fields and tags to return as columns in query results. In Grafana, you must specify a time column in the SELECT list.
   • WHERE: To filter the query results, enter a conditional expression.
   • GROUP BY: To GROUP BY one or more fields or tags, enter them as a comma-delimited list. If you include an aggregate function in the SELECT list, then you must include one or more of the queried columns in a GROUP BY or PARTITION BY clause. SQL will return the aggregation for each group or partition.
4. Click Run query to execute the query.

1. Click Explore.
2. In the dropdown, select the InfluxDB data source that you want to query.
3. Use the InfluxQL query form to build your query:
   • FROM: Select the measurement that you want to query.
   • WHERE: To filter the query results, enter a conditional expression.
   • SELECT: Select fields to query and an aggregate function to apply to each. The aggregate function is applied to each time interval defined in the GROUP BY clause.
   • GROUP BY: By default, Grafana groups data by time to downsample results and improve query performance. You can also add other tags to group by.
4. Click Run query to execute the query.