Advanced Examples

This guide provides advanced examples of search queries for complex use cases.

Complex Boolean Logic

Use parentheses to control evaluation order:

(service.name = 'auth' OR service.name = 'user') AND status_code >= 400

This finds errors from either the auth or user service.

Nested Conditions

Group related conditions for complex logic:

region = 'us-east' AND (
  (status = 'error' AND retry_count > 3) OR
  (status = 'timeout' AND response_time_ms > 5000)
)

This finds issues in us-east that are either:

Errors with more than 3 retries, OR
Timeouts taking longer than 5 seconds

Multi-Service Error Analysis

Find errors across multiple services with specific conditions:

severity_text = 'ERROR' AND 
service.name IN ('payment', 'checkout') AND
http.request.duration > 1000

API Endpoint Analysis

Analyze specific API endpoints:

(http.method = 'POST' OR http.method = 'PUT') AND
http.status_code BETWEEN 200 AND 299 AND
http.url LIKE '%/api/v2/%'

Production Incident Investigation

Complex query for investigating production issues:

deployment.environment = 'production' AND
severity_text IN ('ERROR', 'FATAL') AND
(
  (error.type = 'DatabaseError' AND body CONTAINS 'connection') OR
  (error.type = 'TimeoutError' AND response_time_ms > 30000) OR
  (http.status_code >= 500 AND http.url LIKE '%/critical/%')
)

User Experience Monitoring

Track slow requests affecting specific users:

user.tier = 'premium' AND
service.name = 'api-gateway' AND
(
  (http.method = 'GET' AND response_time_ms > 2000) OR
  (http.method = 'POST' AND response_time_ms > 5000)
) AND
k8s.namespace.name = 'production'

Security Event Detection

Identify potential security issues:

(
  (body CONTAINS 'authentication failed' AND client.ip NOT LIKE '10.%') OR
  (http.status_code = 403 AND request_count > 10) OR
  (body REGEXP '(sql injection|xss|csrf)' AND severity_text = 'WARNING')
)

Performance Degradation Pattern

Find performance degradation patterns:

service.name = 'database-service' AND
(
  (
    query.type = 'SELECT' AND 
    execution_time_ms > 1000 AND
    table_name IN ('users', 'orders', 'payments')
  ) OR
  (
    query.type IN ('INSERT', 'UPDATE') AND
    execution_time_ms > 500 AND
    affected_rows > 1000
  )
) AND
deployment.environment = 'production'

Kubernetes Pod Issues

Investigate pod-specific issues:

k8s.pod.name LIKE 'payment-service-%' AND
k8s.namespace.name = 'production' AND
(
  (severity_text = 'ERROR' AND body CONTAINS 'OOMKilled') OR
  (restart_count > 5) OR
  (body CONTAINS 'CrashLoopBackOff')
)

Cross-Service Transaction Tracing

Find related logs across services for a transaction:

(
  trace_id = '123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000' OR
  correlation_id = 'ORDER-2024-001'
) AND
service.name IN ('order-service', 'payment-service', 'inventory-service')

Feature Flag Analysis

Analyze logs related to feature flags:

has(body.feature_flags, 'new-checkout-flow') AND
(
  (
    conversion.success = true AND 
    response_time_ms < 3000
  ) OR
  (
    severity_text = 'ERROR' AND 
    body CONTAINS 'feature flag evaluation failed'
  )
) AND
deployment.environment = 'production'

Best Practices for Complex Queries

Use parentheses liberally - Make operator precedence explicit
Start broad, then narrow - Begin with service/environment filters
Test incrementally - Build complex queries step by step
Filter on indexed fields first - Use fields like service.name for better performance
Use time ranges in the UI - Set appropriate time windows using the time picker

Last updated: July 31, 2025

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