ClickStack SQL Charting and Alerting

Summary

ClickStack introduced SQL-based visualizations and SQL-based alerting to allow users to build charts and alerts using arbitrary ClickHouse SQL queries. Traditional query builders trade analytical flexibility for simplicity, preventing teams from easily expressing multi-stage computations like rolling baselines, anomaly detection, or dynamic SLO calculations. To maintain interactivity within dashboards, the system supports ClickHouse query parameters and macros that inject active time ranges, interval sizes, dashboard filters, and source tables. Furthermore, SQL-based alerting evaluates the numeric columns output by these queries, such as returning binary flags when values exceed statistical boundaries. By shifting computational logic directly into SQL, teams can implement complex operational checks without relying on static external thresholds.

Takeaways

1. 1

   ClickStack now supports arbitrary ClickHouse SQL queries for building dashboards and alert rules.

2. 2

   Macros such as $__filters and $__sourceTable mirror ClickHouse Grafana plugin conventions to ease query migration and preserve dynamic filtering.

3. 3

   SQL-based alerts evaluate returned numeric query columns, enabling queries to compute rolling baselines and return binary flags directly to trigger alerts.