What is the future of the Flux query language now that SQL support is added?
I've observed that on Grafana.com, most InfluxDB dashboards being shared are all InfluxQL based, and Flux-based dashboards are virtually non-existant.
Personally, if we use InfluxDB in combination with Grafana, the InfluxQL language was quite easy to use in terms of discoverability. With Flux, there's quite a steep learning curve. And mostly clicking something together in the Influx Query builder and copy/pasting it in Grafana, not a fan, although it does work fine.
For new users we are suggesting they use either InfluxQL or SQL. Both are supported natively in 3.0 and we'll continue to support them. We were able to bring InfluxQL support because of its similarity to SQL. We were able to build an InfluxQL parser in Rust and have that converted into DataFusion query plans (the SQL engine we use).
Flux is an entire language and runtime so we weren't able to implement it natively in Rust. We'll continue to support it for our customers, but the path forward long term is InfluxQL and SQL.
We also submitted a FlightSQL plugin to Grafana that works with InfluxDB 3.0. So either the InfluxDB 1.x plugin using InfluxQL or the FlightSQL plugin work.
Personally, if we use InfluxDB in combination with Grafana, the InfluxQL language was quite easy to use in terms of discoverability. With Flux, there's quite a steep learning curve. And mostly clicking something together in the Influx Query builder and copy/pasting it in Grafana, not a fan, although it does work fine.