Ever been an early adopter of, well… anything? From a consumer standpoint, it never works out exactly how you planned. First comes the excitement of the beta, generally followed closely by the frustration of bugs. Those bugs are fixed – excitement – only for new ones to pop up in their places – FRUSTRATION.

From an implementation standpoint, new software can be just as tough to roll out, and even tougher to market. It typically follows a well-defined pattern of:

1. It starts to work
2. It actually works
3. New features are added to make it work better
4. Bug fixes for the new features
5. Rinse and Repeat
6. After your product team runs out of ideas, release your software as a “platform”

Typically, a platform release is 90% marketing and 10% reality. ‘Platform’ is just about the most ambiguous term we could use for an approach that could mean teams can increase delivery speed and efficiency at scale. Empowering your customers to build features atop software can accelerate delivery and help customers meet requirements faster than waiting for the vendor to add features. It’s the leap many companies attempt, but few get right.

The latest version of Cribl Stream includes low-code options for extending a customer’s observability pipeline to meet new requirements. Customers asked for this feature in the Community Slack, and the Cribl team responded with the creation of the Code Function.

A Code Function is a powerful way to transform events without needing to write custom functions. Users get the flexibility they need without having to write complex code; it’s a game changer.

Some Examples of the Power of Code Function

Say you want to reduce your data by aggregating like data from an array into a single number. This use case can not only reduce data ingestion, but it also supports other advanced features such as Machine Learning by aggregating your data before it is indexed. Remember this data can be logged to your data analytics platform and to the metrics store of your choice.

Use the reduce method to summarize data across the array.

Another example of a Code Function gives users more control over their data.

Say you need to force a specific field to be transformed to lower case. This is helpful when you’re using a data model or metrics data store, you need your fields to match, and you have inconsistent logging that creates data quality issues.

In this case, you can use Object.assign to keep the original object, while assigning the name field to the desired value.

The Code Function release also delivers a suite of logging and debugging tools. These are key resources to help users troubleshoot any issues. Customer-first tooling is designed to help users get work done fast.

The new Code Function in Stream clearly shows error messages in the logs.

Use the Debugger option to get visibility into error messages in Stream.

The image above shows a debug Logging example

In the image above, you’ll see a preview of the results of the transformation. The expansion of the Preview Pane is an example of how Stream makes it easier than ever for users to build code fast.

Users can also access global C.* object and its methods/expressions from the function body. This capability is a very powerful set of features that empower users to transform data at scale.

The Bottom Line

The August updates to Stream are a big step toward a full-service, customer-first data platform. Stream empowers users to transform data without limits by leveraging a powerful user experience and open flexible features such as the Code Function.

Cribl Stream rapidly evolves to meet the needs of its users. Have a feature you’d like to see in Stream? Head to the #feature_request channel in our Slack Community to let us know.

The fastest way to get started with Cribl Stream is to sign-up at Cribl.Cloud. You can process up to 1 TB of throughput per day at no cost. Sign-up and start using Stream within a few minutes.