Tech Topics

​​Kibana 4.1: Summer fun for everyone

Kibana 4.1 is now available for your data dicing, stat splicing, log munching, chart crunching enjoyment. In addition to a fork load of great new features, we've put a big focus on performance in Kibana 4.1, improving responsiveness across the board and reducing memory consumption by as much as 10x. Kibana 4.1 does more, and does it all more quickly. Can't wait? Grab Kibana 4.1.0 now. Otherwise, dig into the juicy details below.

Axis Awesomeness

Spikes. You deal with them often. Server load hits the ceiling, prices jump for a moment. Kibana 4.1 brings support for logarithmic axis in the line chart. Logarithmic scales allow you to smooth out those big spikes so that the important details aren't unduly impacted by one big event. Speaking of smooth, we've introduced smoothing to line and area charts. Sure, smooth lines are a lie, but they're your lie and they sure do look good!

Bubble charts

But thats not all we've done with line charts. We've also introduced a new metric dimension for line charts called **dot size**. This new metric lets us define the size of the dots placed on the line based on some other metric. For example, is the bandwidth used to serve large files potentially impacting my ability to handle more users?

New aggregations

To help you utilize those new visualization modes we've built support for more elasticsearch aggregations including percentile ranks and date ranges.

Map Madness

In addition to improvements to how we communicate the nature of the map projection, we added the ability to render a heat maps. And because heat maps are built using HTML canvas, instead of SVG, they're super fast, enabling you to crank up the precision of the aggregation. Plus, when you need to drill in, we're added geographic filters. Draw and box and we'll filter your request down to just the region you're interested in.

Put a pin in it

Speaking of filters, we're introducing the concept of **pinned filters**. We just can't stop using this feature, I don't know how we lived with out it. Imagine you're on a dashboard and you've filtered the view down to using a combination of filters. Now you want to jump back to discover and dig into the documents, or create a new visualization looking at only that filtered data. With filter pinning you can. Pinning a filter means it sticks with you no matter where you go in the app. So if you create a filter in Discover and pin it, it will still be there when you head over to the Dashboard. 

And when you're on that dashboard, don't miss that new option when you go to save. If you're a Kibana 3 user you may remember that your time filter was always saved with the dashboard. We've brought that option back in Kibana 4.1: Select Store time with dashboard and Kibana will return you to right where you left off when you load the dashboard.

Field formatting

We've always wanted you to see your data how you want it. While aggregations allow us to compose complex, expressive, visualizations, we wanted to be able to do that same thing with the actual values of fields. Thus, we've introduced field formatters in Kibana 4.1. Now you can continue to index your data just how you'd like it, as numbers, or unformatted strings, and let Kibana do the rest. For example, format numbers as bytes, or URL strings as links. URL formatting even support templates allowing you to use Kibana data to create custom links to other applications.

And so much more

That isn't even close to everything in Kibana 4.1. You'll discover improved functionality around every corner. We've streamlined where we can and reduced unnecessary configuration whenever possible. We've fixed dozens of bugs and added important management features, like importing and exporting schemas, and fine grained timeout configuration. Download Kibana 4.1 and give it a shot!

Engage

Of course Kibana is a product of your input and insight. We wanted to make it easier for you to stay up to date, try out the latest and great, and contribute to the project. We've begun publishing snapshot builds of the latest Kibana code to let you ride the knife edge. Have a question? Join us on the new Kibana forum at discuss.elastic.co. Have a bug? Let us know on github. Make something great? Tell @elastic about your #kibana dashboards on twitter. Happy data hunting!