Cube Datasource Plugin for Grafana

Experimental: This plugin is experimental. Features may be incomplete or have known limitations, and you should expect some rough edges. See Experimental Status for details.

Connect Grafana to Cube for semantic layer analytics. Query measures and dimensions, apply filters, and visualize your data—without writing SQL.

Why Use This Plugin?

This plugin brings a true semantic layer to Grafana for the first time. By connecting to Cube, you get:

• No more writing SQL — Query your data using pre-defined measures and dimensions
• No more writing JOINs — Cube handles the complexity of joining tables for you
• Single source of truth — Business metrics are defined once in Cube and used consistently across all dashboards
• Lower barrier to entry — Non-technical users can build dashboards without SQL knowledge
• Scalable complexity — Start simple, but analytics queries can grow as sophisticated as you need
• More maintainable dashboards — Panels require far less code when using semantic definitions
• Cross-panel filtering — Use AdHoc filters to drill down across Table and Bar Chart panels, enabling data exploration for dashboard viewers

Features

Query Builder

The visual query builder supports:

Filtering

Per-panel filters support:

• Filter members: Dimensions only (measure filtering not yet supported)
• Operators: equals and notEquals, each accepting multiple values
• Multiple filters: Combine with AND (intersection)

Dashboard Variables

AdHoc Filters

Clicking a value in a Table or Bar Chart panel creates or updates an AdHoc dashboard variable scoped to the Cube datasource. This enables powerful cross-panel filtering and data exploration.

AdHoc filters can also be edited directly in the dashboard UI to add additional filter members, operators, and values. The same operator limitations apply (= and != only).

How filters combine:

• Multiple AdHoc filters combine with AND (intersection)
• AdHoc filters combine with per-panel filters using AND (intersection)

Time Range Filtering

To filter all panels by the dashboard time picker:

1. Create a dashboard variable with identifier cubeTimeDimension
2. Set its value to the time dimension field you want to filter by (e.g., order_date)
3. The dashboard's $__from and $__to variables will automatically apply to all panels

Requirements

• Grafana 12.1.0 or later
• A running Cube instance (self-hosted*)

*See Known Limitations regarding using Cube Cloud.

Getting Started

1. Install the plugin from the Grafana plugin catalog
2. Go to Connections → Data sources → Add data source
3. Search for "Cube" and select it
4. Configure the connection:
   • URL: Your Cube REST API endpoint (e.g., http://localhost:4000)
   • Deployment Type: Select your Cube deployment type (self-hosted or self-hosted-dev)*
   • API Secret: Your Cube API secret (if authentication is enabled)
   • SQL Datasource: Select the SQL datasource to open when clicking "Edit SQL in Explore"
5. Click Save & test to verify the connection

*See Known Limitations regarding using Cube Cloud.

Known Limitations

This plugin is experimental. Current limitations include:

Experimental Status

This plugin is marked as experimental, meaning:

• Features may be incomplete or have known limitations
• Backward compatibility is not guaranteed between versions
• The data model, configuration, or UI might change, potentially breaking dashboards
• The plugin is primarily intended for testing, evaluation, and early feedback

Recommendations:

• Use in development or test environments before deploying to production
• Test thoroughly, including upgrade paths
• Avoid building hard production dependencies unless you're comfortable refactoring later
• Track the changelog for breaking changes

Documentation

• Cube Documentation
• GitHub Repository

Contributing

We welcome contributions and feedback! Please open issues or pull requests on the GitHub repository.