Time Range Comparisons

This page describes the time range comparison feature in AppDynamics.

You can use the time range comparison in Dash Studio to identify differences in the application performance trends for two time periods. You can align two time periods of the same data and compare. For instance, it might be useful to compare an application’s average response time on the previous day with the same day last week.

Comparisons are currently available only for Time Series widget and Metric Number widget.
All Data Panel options for Time Series widget and Metric Number widget support comparisons.
Global time range (for example “Last 4 hours”) is selected for the entire dashboard by default.

Compare Time Range
The default global time range is denoted as T1 and time comparisons are performed using this time range.

Compare Two Time Periods

To compare two time periods on a widget:

Select the widget from the widget panel.
Expand the Compare Time Range section under the Widget Properties panel.
Set a second time range (denoted as T2) with the same duration as the global time range. You can shift T2 back in time based on the settings in the Compare Time Range section.
You can select one of the following options:
- None: This is the default setting for all the widgets when initially placed on the canvas. Select this option to exclude time comparison.
- Previous Time Range: This option compares the same length of time range (T2) as the current time range (T1). For example, if T1 is “Last 1 hour”, you can select a one-hour time range from an earlier time of the day.
  If you open or import an existing dashboard with the None option, the Previous Time Range option gets selected automatically.
  This option is applicable only for the Metric Value widget.
- Time Shift: This option shifts current widget time range (T1) back by the selected amount of time to become T2. For example, if T1 is “Last 1 hour” and the Time Shift is set to 2 Hours, T2 is 2 hours earlier than T1. When you select this option, you first specify a whole number not less than one as the first input and then select one of the available time options (minutes, hours, days, or weeks) from the dropdown.
- Absolute Range: Use this option to specify the T2 comparison time range by selecting either the Start Date/Time, or the End Date/Time of the range. For example, if T1 is “Last 1 hour” and you select this option, you can use the date and time inputs to select a start of 8 days ago at 11 am. T2 would thus be 11 am to 12 pm on that specific day. After you set the second or third options, T1 and T2 are superimposed over the same chart space in the Time Series widget.

When you select an option other than None, you can turn these on:

- Reverse Trend Color: Reverse the color of the relative trend of the widget value.
- Compared Value Only: Hide the current value, and show the compared values.

Granularity

By default, Dash Studio matches granularities if there are differences between T1 and T2 time ranges. AppDynamics stores less recent data at a lower granularity which means fewer data points are displayed on the data series in Dash Studio. To perform an apples-to-apples comparison, Dash Studio is set to Auto by default and shows both T1 and T2 time ranges using the same granularity (even if they differ). However, you can change this behavior by selecting the Retain Original Granularity option instead of the Auto option. When you select Retain Original Granularity option, both T1 and T2 show data at their original granularities. This makes comparing behaviors difficult, but the newer data is highly granular.

Showing the time range comparison doubles the number of data series on the chart. If initially three lines are shown in the widget time range without the comparison, six are shown when the comparison is defined. As new data is received, the widget and its comparisons are updated continuously.
AppDynamics stores a reduced granularity (fewer data points) for older time ranges.
Granularity is not available for Metric Number widget.