Glossary¶

An analytics and visualization application that reads time-series data in place from data platforms through built-in Connectors.

Items¶

Item: Any named data object in plintz: a Signal, Condition or Scalar. Avoid: Object, entity, series

Sample: One data point in a Signal: a timestamp (key) and a numeric value. Avoid: Point, row, reading, record

Rollup: The minimum, maximum, first and last value and the Sample count of a Signal within one minute aligned to the UTC epoch. Avoid: Aggregate, summary, downsample

Signal: A time-ordered collection of Samples, together with its properties: unit of measure, Interpolation Method and Maximum Interpolation. Avoid: Series, time series, trend line, tag

Stored Signal: A Signal whose Samples are read from a Datasource. It is identified there by its Data ID. Avoid: Raw signal, source signal, historian signal

Capsule: A half-open time interval [start, end) with optional properties. Its end is the first time outside it, so adjacent Capsules touch without overlapping. Avoid: Event, period, episode, interval

Condition: A collection of Capsules defined by the same logic, for example "high load". Avoid: Event frame, state, filter

Maximum Duration: The longest a Capsule in a Condition may be. Avoid: Max length, timeout

Scalar: A single time-independent constant, optionally with a unit of measure. Avoid: Constant, parameter

Calculated Item: An Item defined by a Formula over other Items: a Calculated Signal, Calculated Condition or Calculated Scalar. Avoid: Derived signal, virtual tag, computed signal

Formula: The expression language used to define a Calculated Item. plintz supports a subset of its syntax. Avoid: Expression, script, query

Interpolation¶

Interpolation Method: How a Signal's value is drawn between two Samples: Step, Linear, PILinear or Discrete. Defaults to Step. Avoid: Interpolation type, fill mode

Maximum Interpolation: The largest gap between two consecutive Samples that is still interpolated. A wider gap shows as a gap in the Signal. Avoid: Max gap, stale limit

Boundary Sample: The last Sample before a time range, or the first after it, no further from the range than the Signal's Maximum Interpolation. It lets a Signal be interpolated up to the range's edges. Avoid: Edge sample, outside sample

Uncertainty¶

Uncertainty: The earliest point in time at which an Item's values may still change. A Sample at the Uncertainty is uncertain. Avoid: Freshness, staleness, live edge

Uncertainty Override: A per-Signal property that replaces its Datasource's default Uncertainty Lag. Avoid: Certainty lag override, freshness setting

Uncertainty Lag: How far before now a Stored Signal's uncertain region begins. Each Datasource sets a default, and an Uncertainty Override replaces it for one Signal. Avoid: Certainty lag, freshness window, ingestion delay

Uncertain Data: Samples or Capsules in an Item's uncertain region. Signals draw them dashed and Conditions draw them hollow. A Calculated Item inherits the uncertainty of its most uncertain input. Avoid: Provisional data, unconfirmed data

Workbench¶

Workbench: The interactive analysis environment. Avoid: Editor, app, dashboard

Analysis: A saved Workbench document. It contains Worksheets and owns the Calculated Items created in it. It is at the top level or in one Folder. Avoid: Workbook, project, notebook, dashboard

Worksheet: One page of an Analysis. It holds a Details Pane, a Display Range and an Investigate Range, and saves its chosen view. Avoid: Tab, page

Worksheet view: One of the visualizations a Worksheet can show: Trend, XY Plot, Chain View or Table. Avoid: Display mode

Tool: A panel of the Workbench's Tools tab that creates a Calculated Item, such as Formula, Value Search or Periodic Condition. Avoid: Wizard, builder, calculator

Details Pane: The list of Items currently shown on the trend. Avoid: Legend, item list, selection

Display Range: The closed time range [from, to] over which the trend shows Signals and Conditions. Under Auto Update with its end at now, it is [from, now). Avoid: Time window, viewport, zoom range

Investigate Range: The wider time range around the Display Range over which the Details Pane's Conditions show their Capsules. It always contains the Display Range. Its ends are included as the Display Range's are. Avoid: Investigation Range, mini-map, overview, navigator

Auto Update: A Worksheet mode in which the Display Range and the Investigate Range keep moving forward with now, at a set rate. Avoid: Live mode, streaming, follow now

Time zone: The user's preference for the time zone used to display and enter times. It can be an IANA time zone such as Europe/Zurich, or "auto detect", which uses the browser's time zone. A user who hasn't chosen one has "auto detect". Avoid: Timezone, locale

Lane: A horizontal band of the trend, stacked with others top to bottom. Each Signal or Scalar is plotted in one lane, and those in the same lane overlap. Avoid: Row, panel, track, subplot

One Lane: The trend action that puts the Signals and Scalars selected in the Details Pane in one Lane, or all of them if none is selected. They go to the lowest-numbered Lane among them and keep their Y-Axis bounds; Lanes left empty close. Avoid: Merge lanes, combine, overlay

One Y-Axis: The trend action that fixes the Y-Axis of the Signals and Scalars selected in the Details Pane to one shared minimum and maximum, or of all of them if none is selected. It computes the bounds once, from their auto-scaled values over the Display Range, and changes no Lane; moving the Display Range afterwards doesn't change them. Avoid: Shared axis, merge axes, link axes

Spread: The trend action that gives each Signal and Scalar selected in the Details Pane, or all of them if none is selected, its own Lane and an auto-scaled Y-Axis, which drops any fixed min and max. Each leaves its Lane for a new one directly after the Lane it left, in Details Pane order, and Lanes left empty close. It changes no Condition and no unselected Item. Avoid: Reset, separate lanes, unmerge

Y-Axis: The value scale a Signal or Scalar is plotted against in its lane: auto-scaled to its values in the Display Range, or fixed to a set min and max. Avoid: Scale, range, y-range

Capsules Pane: The table of Capsules within the Display Range, showing their start, end, duration and properties. Avoid: Event list, capsule table

Capsule Time: The Trend view in which Signals are overlaid relative to the start of each Capsule. Its toggle is available only in Trend, and choosing another Worksheet view turns it off. Avoid: Overlay view, batch view, aligned view

Capsule Time Range: The span of time since each Capsule's start that Capsule Time shows, panned and zoomed as the Display Range is in the trend. Avoid: Window, capsule window, relative range

Table: The Worksheet view that lists statistics of the Details Pane's Items. A Simple Table has one row per Signal or Scalar in Details Pane order, with a column for each chosen Item property (name, unit of measure, description or Lane) or statistic (Average, Minimum, Maximum, Range, Standard Deviation, Sum, Count, First or Last) over the Display Range, kept in the order chosen. A statistic shows in the Item's unit and is blank where it is empty; one that reaches the Item's Uncertainty is Uncertain Data, shown italic with the tooltip "Uncertain Data". Statistics are fetched again when the Display Range, the Signals and Scalars of the Details Pane or the columns change, and under Auto Update as the trend is. A Condition is not a row of a Simple Table. A Condition Table has one row per Capsule of the Details Pane's Conditions in the Display Range, in start order, with a Condition that appears twice giving its Capsules once. Its columns are Start, End, Duration, the Capsules' properties and the Signal-and-statistic pairs added, in the order added, each the pair's statistic over each Capsule, fetched for all the Capsules in one request and shown as in a Simple Table. A Capsule not fully inside the Display Range shows "starts off-screen" or "ends off-screen" and no Duration, as the Capsules Pane does, and its statistics are over the part of it inside the Display Range. A Worksheet saves its Table's type, the Simple Table's columns and Transpose and the Condition Table's pairs and Transpose, whether or not the Table is its view. Avoid: Grid, spreadsheet, report

Transpose: The Table action that swaps its rows and columns, so that each Item property or statistic is a row and each Signal or Scalar a column. It is off by default in a Simple Table and on by default in a Condition Table, each saved apart. In a Condition Table, Transpose on puts the Capsules down the table; off, each of Start, End, Duration, a Capsule property or a statistic is a row and each Capsule a column. Avoid: Rotate, flip, pivot

Chain View: The Worksheet view that shows the Details Pane's Signals only during the Capsules of its Conditions, laid side by side in start order with the time between Capsules left out. Each Capsule is as wide as its duration, under a header with its start; a Capsule partly outside the Display Range is clipped to it, and its header says it starts or ends off-screen. It uses the Details Pane's Lanes and Y-Axes, has no pan or zoom, and needs at least one Condition and one Signal. Conditions selected in the Details Pane filter it, and the Capsules Pane with it, to their Capsules; with none selected, all the Details Pane's Conditions count, and selected Signals change nothing. Avoid: Capsule strip, filtered trend

Chain View Group: Chain View's way of tying a Signal to a Condition so that the Signal shows only during that Condition's Capsules. The toolbar's Group toggle gives each Signal row of the Details Pane a select of the Condition it is tied to, or "All" for none; each Signal is tied to one Condition at most. A Signal tied to a Condition shows only in its Capsules. A Condition with no Signal tied to it shows all the Signals not tied to another Condition, and one with a Signal tied to it shows only the Signals tied to it. The ties apply whether or not the toggle is on, which only shows the selects and is not saved. The ties are saved with the Worksheet, and a tie is dropped when the Signal or the Condition it names leaves the Details Pane. A Signal tied to a Condition that the Details Pane's selection filters out shows in no Capsule. Items can't be grouped by shared parent metadata. It is not a Group of users. Avoid: link, filter

XY Plot: The Worksheet view that plots one Signal against another instead of against time. Its Scatter option draws one point for each time at which both Signals have a value. Avoid: Scatter Plot, cross plot, correlation plot

Sharing¶

Owner: The user who created an Analysis or Folder, or the active user an Administrator transferred it to. The Owner always has full access to it, including Manage, and it can't be taken away by a Grant. The Owner of a Folder also counts as a Manage Grantee, inherited, on everything inside it. A transfer keeps the Grants, except one the new Owner held, which it makes redundant; the previous Owner then has no access unless granted it, and Last Updated changes. Avoid: Creator, author, admin

Administrator: A user the deployment names as one. Administrators have Manage on every Analysis and Folder they open or address, which doesn't add it to their Analyses list, use the Administration page, run Indexing on demand and override a Stored Signal's properties, which changes them for every user. Avoid: Admin, superuser, operator

Grant: A Permission on an Analysis or Folder, given to a Grantee by its Owner or by a user with Manage on it. An explicit Grant is given on the item itself; an Inherited Grant comes from its parent Folder. Avoid: Share, ACL entry, access rule

Grantee: The user, Group or Everyone that a Grant is given to. Avoid: Recipient, sharee, member

Everyone: All users of plintz, taken together as one Grantee. Avoid: All users, public, company

Permission: The access a Grant gives: Read, Write or Manage. A user with several Grants on one Analysis or Folder, their own, those of the Groups they are in at any depth and Everyone's, has the highest Permission. An explicit Grant to a Grantee replaces the Inherited Grant to that same Grantee only, and can raise or lower it. Avoid: Role, privilege, collaboration level

Read: The Permission to open an Analysis and its Worksheets without changing them, or to open a Folder and see what it shows. Avoid: View, viewer, read-only

Write: The Permission to change an Analysis and its Worksheets, or to create Folders and Analyses in a Folder, rename it and move items into it. It includes Read. Avoid: Edit, editor, contributor

Manage: The Permission to change an Analysis's Grants, which includes giving Manage and changing or revoking one's own, and to move it to the Trash and restore it, and, for an Analysis or Folder, to move it to another Folder or the top level. Moving into a Folder also needs Write on the destination; the top level needs no Write. Moving keeps the Owner and explicit Grants, takes the new parent's Inherited Grants and changes Last Updated. For a Folder it also covers its inheritance; a Folder cannot be moved into itself or a descendant. No Grant can remove the Owner's access. Avoid: Admin access, full control, co-owner

Folder: A named container of Analyses and other Folders, nested to any depth and never in a cycle. It has an Owner and Grants as an Analysis has, and is at the top level or in one Folder. Its name is trimmed, 1-1024 characters, unique regardless of capitalization among the Folders in the same parent, and top-level Folders are unique per Owner; a taken name is refused without saying whose it is. A new Folder is named "New Folder", or the next free "New Folder 2". Any user creates Folders, in My Folder or in a Folder they have Write on. A user with Manage moves an Analysis or Folder to another Folder they have Write on, or to the top level without Write; the destination can't be in the Trash. It keeps its Owner and explicit Grants and takes the new parent's Inherited Grants. A Folder cannot be moved into itself or a descendant. Its Last Updated changes when it is renamed, moved, trashed, restored, when its Grants or inheritance change, or when its Owner is transferred; not when its contents change. Trashing it marks only that Folder and suspends everything inside it at any depth, without trashing those contents themselves, until the Folder is restored. A user sees in a Folder only what they can read, Folders first by name regardless of capitalization, then Analyses most recently updated first. Avoid: Directory, project, category

Bulk operation: Moving or moving to the Trash several rows of the Analyses list at once, or restoring several rows of the Trash page or the Administration page's Trash tab. The Analyses list has a checkbox on each row, a header checkbox that selects all the rows of the Folder, and a bar with Move to… and Move to Trash; the selection clears on navigation. The bar disables an action the selection already shows can't succeed, with a tooltip. Move to… uses the dialog of a single move, leaving out the selected Folders and everything in them, and a bulk Move to Trash confirms with "N Analyses and M Folders, and everything in the Folders". Each operation has the rules of the single one and is all or nothing: every selected item is checked first, in one transaction, and if any fails nothing changes and the response names each failure and why. A selected Folder and an item inside it can both be selected. Avoid: Batch, mass action, multi-select

My Folder: The user's own top level: the Folders and Analyses they created and haven't put in another Folder, and those in them. A new Analysis or Folder is created in the Folder being looked at, My Folder included. Avoid: Home, workspace, root

Shared: The flat list of every Folder or Analysis the user can read whose parent Folder they can't read, or that is at another user's top level, including those shared with Everyone. It isn't a Folder, so nothing is created in it. Avoid: Shared with me, public

Breadcrumbs: The links above a Folder's listing, from My Folder or Shared through the Folders above it to the open Folder, which has no link. They show only the Folders above that the user can open. Avoid: Path bar

Folder path: The names of the Folders an Analysis or Folder is in, from the topmost, joined by " >> "; the item's own name is not in it, and it is empty at the top level. The Administration page shows it as the Analyses tab's Folder path and the Folders tab's path. Avoid: Location, breadcrumbs

Inherited Grant: A Grant an Analysis or Folder gets from its parent Folder's effective Grants, including the Owner of that Folder as a Manage Grantee. It applies unless "Inherit permissions from parent" is unticked on the item. A Folder with an explicit Grant to a Grantee passes that one down in place of the Inherited Grant to that Grantee. Avoid: Cascaded permission, parent permission

Inherit permissions from parent: The switch, on by default, that lets an Analysis or Folder have Inherited Grants. A user with Manage unticks it to make the item private within a shared Folder. Avoid: Break inheritance, detach

Group: A named set of users and other Groups, created, renamed and deleted by Administrators. A Group can be a Grantee, found by name in the Share dialog by the Owner or a user with Manage, and all its members, directly or through the Groups in it, have the Grant; the Share dialog labels it "Group". Deleting a Group removes the Grants given to it, on Analyses and Folders, and the confirmation says how many of each. Its name is unique regardless of capitalization, and Everyone is reserved. Groups nest to any depth but never in a cycle, and being in one never makes anyone an Administrator. Avoid: Team, role, user group

Data sources¶

Connector: Built-in code that reads one kind of system, such as Databricks. Avoid: Driver, adapter, plugin, agent

Datasource: One configured repository of data, reached through a Connector. It owns Stored Signals and their defaults, such as Uncertainty. Avoid: Source, connection, database

Data ID: The identifier of a Stored Signal within its Datasource. In Databricks it is the tag_id column. Avoid: Tag, tag ID, source ID

Indexing: Periodically copying Stored Signal metadata from a Datasource into plintz, so that Signals can be searched. Each Indexing records how many Stored Signals it stored, and how many it added and left out compared to the Indexing before it. Avoid: Sync, import, crawl

Data management¶

Trash: The soft-deleted state of an Item, an Analysis or a Folder. A trashed Item can't be found by search, but it keeps working wherever it is displayed or used as an input. A trashed Analysis is left out of the Analyses lists and is inaccessible to everyone, its Owner too, until its Owner, a user with Manage or an Administrator restores it, one at a time or in a Bulk operation. It keeps its Worksheets, Calculated Items, Grants and name. Trashing a Folder marks only that Folder, recording who trashed it and when; its name stays reserved. Everything inside it at any depth is inaccessible to everyone, its Owner too, and left out of every list, but isn't itself trashed and comes back with the Folder. Restoring a Folder updates its Last Updated. Restoring an Analysis or Folder trashed on its own also restores the trashed Folders above it, which needs Manage on each using their suspended Grants; the operation is refused whole and names those Folders if any lacks Manage. Other contents of those Folders, which were never trashed, come back. The Trash page lists, for every user, the trashed Folders and Analyses they have Manage on and the Calculated Items trashed in Analyses they have Write on; each Folder shows the number of Analyses and Folders inside, and an Analysis or Folder trashed on its own is nested under its nearest trashed Folder. Each row shows who trashed it and when, and what was trashed before these were recorded shows them as unknown. The Administration page's Trash tab lists everything in the Trash to Administrators, Folders and Stored Signals included, with its type, name, where it belongs and who trashed it and when, and restores any of it; a Stored Signal that Indexing trashed shows "Indexing" and the Indexing's time in place of a user. Avoid: Delete, archive, recycle bin

Permanent delete: The Administration page's Trash tab action, for Administrators only, that deletes something in the Trash for good, after a confirmation naming what goes with it; nothing deletes anything automatically, and Manage doesn't include it. An Analysis goes with its Worksheets, Calculated Items, Grants and cached blocks, and its name is free. A Calculated Item goes with its cached blocks, and is refused while another Calculated Item uses it or a saved Details Pane holds it. A Stored Signal goes with its overrides and cached blocks, and is refused while a Calculated Item uses it or a saved Details Pane holds it; if its Datasource still has it, the next Indexing adds it back as a new Stored Signal. A refusal names what is in the way. Avoid: Hard delete, purge, empty the Trash

Item Usages: The Calculated Items whose Formulas reference an Item, with a $variable bound to it. Avoid: Consumers, referrers, downstream items

Invalidation: A request to discard cached data for a Datasource, or for one Data ID in it, either completely or over a [start, end) range. All Calculated Items that depend on that data are invalidated as well. Avoid: Cache bust, refresh, purge

Administration¶

Administration: The page where Administrators manage users, Groups and Datasources, see every Analysis and Folder, the effective configuration, the Audit Trail and the Trash. Its Analyses tab lists every Analysis not in the Trash with its name, Folder path, Owner and Last Updated, sortable by each; a row opens the Analysis with the Manage every Administrator has, and an Administrator moves it to the Trash, after the confirmation the Analyses list asks for, or transfers it to another Owner, after a confirmation. Its Folders tab does the same for Folders: it lists every Folder not in the Trash, and not inside one that is, with its name, path, Owner and Last Updated, sortable by each; a row opens the Folder with Manage, an Administrator moves it to the Trash, after the confirmation the Analyses list asks for, or transfers it to another active user, after a confirmation, which keeps the Grants except one the new Owner held as redundant and updates Last Updated. It edits no Datasource and no setting: the deployment config declares them, with every secret redacted. Avoid: Admin panel, settings, console

Index now: The Administration action that runs Indexing for one Datasource at once. Only Administrators may run Indexing. The Audit Trail records each Datasource it indexes, with the Administrator as the actor; Indexing that no one asked for is not recorded, but the Stored Signals it trashes or restores are. Avoid: Sync now, refresh, reindex

Clear cache: The Administration action that applies Invalidation to a whole Datasource, after a confirmation, and says when it is done. The Audit Trail records it, with the Administrator as the actor. Avoid: Purge, flush, reset

Audit Trail: The record of changes to Items, Analyses, Folders, Grants, users, Groups and Datasources, kept forever in an append-only table: nothing updates or deletes an entry, and nothing purges the table. Each entry has its timestamp, who made the change (the actor), its Change type, the item's type, ID and name, a summary, and the state before and after as JSON; a creation has no state before and a deletion has no state after. An entry is recorded in the same transaction as the change, so neither exists without the other, and a request that changes nothing records nothing. Only Administrators see it, on the Administration page's Audit Trail tab, which pages through entries newest first and filters by date range, user, item (its ID) and Change type. It selects the last hour by default. Disabling and enabling a user, recorded as UPDATE, are its first events. It records Groups created, renamed and deleted and their membership changes; Grants added (CREATE), changed (UPDATE) and removed (DELETE) on an Analysis or Folder, each Grant an item of its own, named by its Grantee and the Analysis or Folder; and, for an Analysis, its creation (CREATE), rename, move, Inherit permissions from parent switch, Owner transfer, Trash and restore (UPDATE) and permanent delete (DELETE), which keeps the Analysis's name and Owner in its state before. A Folder has the same events but no permanent delete: one entry for the Folder each time, so that trashing a Folder is one entry for it and none for what is inside it, and restoring an Analysis or Folder records each trashed Folder above it that it restores too. A bulk operation records one entry per item. The state of an Analysis or Folder holds its name, Owner, the Folder it is in (the parent, for a Folder), the switch and whether it is in the Trash. Deleting a Group lists in its state before the Grants it removes on Analyses and Folders. For Items and Datasources it records a Stored Signal's overrides, Trash, restore (also when Indexing does it) and permanent delete, a Calculated Item's creation, Formula edits, Trash, restore and permanent delete, and, for a Datasource, Index now, Clear cache and each call of the Invalidation API, as one entry. Logins, Worksheet content, ranges, reads and preferences such as the Time zone are not recorded. Avoid: Audit log, history, activity log

Actor: Who made the change an Audit Trail entry records: a user, or what is no user. The Stored Signals that Indexing trashes or restores are recorded with the actor "Indexing", and each call of the Invalidation API with the actor "service token". Avoid: Changed by, author, principal

Change type: What an Audit Trail entry says was done to its item: CREATE, UPDATE (any change, Trash and restore included) or DELETE (permanent delete). Avoid: Action, operation, event type