What’s new in the ClickHouse Grafana plugin

Summary

ClickHouse’s Grafana plugin has shipped a set of changes aimed at making common observability tasks—finding log lines, narrowing to services, and detecting deployments—faster without requiring SQL. Version 4.20 adds single-table configuration and compact query mode, where users search logs, apply type-aware filters, review query history, and see or edit generated ClickHouse SQL. Investigation can proceed by clicking through collapsible OpenTelemetry Resource, Scope, and Log attributes, filtering values or selected message text, while dashboards can discover Map keys and values across tables. The release also includes interactive Logs Explorer, Traces Explorer, and per-service OpenTelemetry dashboards, plus guided variable and annotation editors that generate editable SQL for distinct values and change markers such as deployments and rollbacks. Additional changes cover schema-introspection caching, trace-ID lookup, Grafana 13 compatibility, SQL validation, backend OpenTelemetry instrumentation, and forwarding Grafana identity to ClickHouse; compact mode initially remains limited to single-table data sources.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Compact query mode lets users search a configured single table with type-aware filters, query history, and a live SQL preview; custom log fields and columns are scheduled for inclusion in the next plugin build.

2. 2

   Expanded log rows group OpenTelemetry attributes into collapsible Resource, Scope, and Log sections, where users can filter values, remove filters, or filter directly from selected log-message text.

3. 3

   Guided annotation and variable editors generate editable SQL for detecting column changes or retrieving distinct values, including keys within Map columns; deployment reversions can appear as separate markers.