Observability Query Builder: A Four-Year Iteration Focused on User Experience

A company iterated three times on their query builder over four years. Initial versions were based on flawed assumptions, leading to usability issues even for senior engineers. V3 and V4 oversimplified, lacking complex boolean expressions and effective log support. Through extensive user support and feedback, they recognized the importance of user experience and released V5. V5's core principle: 'Stop making decisions for users.' It empowers users with more control and a more intuitive interface, featuring powerful capabilities like arbitrary nesting, precedence rules, and cross-data-type queries. V5 received overwhelmingly positive feedback; users even abandoned raw SQL in favor of the builder. Future plans involve incremental updates adding subqueries and joins, continuously enhancing the user experience.
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