Glossary
This topic lists words and abbreviations that are commonly used in the Grafana documentation and community.
app plugin | An extension of Grafana that allows users to provide additional functionality to enhance their experience by including a set of panel and data source plugins, as well as custom pages. See also data source plugin, panel plugin, and plugin. |
dashboard | A set of one or more panels, organized and arranged into one or more rows, that provide an at-a-glance view of related information. |
data source | A file, database, or service providing the data. Grafana supports several data sources by default, and can be extended to support additional data sources through plugins. |
data source plugin | Extends Grafana with support for additional data sources. See also data source, app plugin, panel plugin, and plugin. |
exemplar | An exemplar is any data that serves as a detailed example of one of the observations aggregated into a metric. An exemplar contains the observed value together with an optional timestamp and arbitrary labels, which are typically used to reference a trace. |
Explore | Explore allows a user to focus on building a query. Users can refine the query to return the expected metrics before building a dashboard. For more information, refer to the Explore topic. |
export or import dashboard | Grafana includes the ability to export your dashboards to a file containing JSON. Community members sometimes share their created dashboards on the Grafana Dashboards page. Dashboards previously exported or found on this site may be imported by other users. |
exporter | An exporter translates data that comes out of a data source into a format that Prometheus can digest. |
Integration (Grafana Cloud) | Each Integration in Grafana Cloud uses the cloud agent to connect your data source to Grafana Cloud for visualizing. Note: Prometheus uses the word “integrations” to refer to software that exposes Prometheus metrics without needing an exporter, which is a different use of the same word we use here. |
graph | A commonly-used visualization that displays data as points, lines, or bars. |
mixin | A mixin is a set of Grafana dashboards and Prometheus rules and alerts, written in Jsonnet and packaged together in a bundle. |
panel | Basic building block in Grafana, composed by a query and a visualization. Can be moved and resized within a dashboard. |
panel plugin | Extends Grafana with additional visualization options. See also panel, plugin, app plugin, and data source plugin. |
plugin | An extension of Grafana that allows users to provide additional functionality to enhance their experience. See also app plugin, data source plugin, and panel plugin. |
query | Used to request data from a data source. The structure and format of the query depend on the specific data source. |
time series | A series of measurements, ordered by time. Time series are stored in data sources and returned as the result of a query. |
trace | An observed execution path of a request through a distributed system. For more information, refer to What is Distributed Tracing? |
transformation | Transformations process the result set of a query before it’s passed on for visualization. For more information, refer to the Transformations overview topic. |
visualization | A graphical representation of query results. |