Data Visualization Library Unification

1 post · Sep 2019 – Mar 2023

What this trail covers

GitLab is unifying its charting libraries to improve development velocity and onboarding. The platform has chosen ECharts for its robust and flexible chart types, good performance, and growing ecosystem. ECharts has been integrated into the Monitor, Secure, and Manage stages, increasing the rate of new chart type development. This post details the addition of Product Analytics capabilities to the platform, leveraging Snowplow, ClickHouse, and Cube.dev for instrumentation, data storage, and data visualization.

All GitLab trails

Mar 2023Product Analytics: A sneak peek at our upcoming featureThis post introduces the addition of Product Analytics capabilities to GitLab. It details the vision, current work, and future plans for enabling users to instrument their applications, collect and process data, and gain insights within GitLab. The post highlights the use of Snowplow, ClickHouse, and Cube.dev for the core infrastructure, and ECharts for visualization. It also emphasizes the integration of dashboard and visualization configuration with GitLab projects and merge requests, and the dogfooding of the feature with the internal handbook. Privacy controls, including opt-out signals and user control over data, are also discussed.
Sep 2019Why we chose ECharts for data visualizationsThis post details the technical decision-making process for adopting ECharts as GitLab's primary charting library. It contrasts ECharts with D3.js, highlighting ECharts' flexibility, performance (demonstrated with GIFs of varying data points), and growing ecosystem. The post also mentions the initial integration into the Monitor stage and subsequent expansion to Secure and Manage stages, and the partnership with the ECharts community.
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