Pinba Engine Table Types

Every PINBA table is a virtual view over the in-memory statistics aggregated by the engine. The table type is specified in the COMMENT of the CREATE TABLE statement. The engine ignores the physical column names and maps columns to statistics by their ordinal position.

Core tables

These tables are created by default_tables.sql and are always present in a working setup.

Table name	COMMENT	Description
request	request	Ring buffer of raw incoming requests
timer	timer	Per-request timer data
timertag	timertag	Tag key-value pairs attached to each timer
tag	tag	Tag name dictionary
info	info	Aggregated engine-wide counters for the current time window
status	status	Engine status: pool sizes, error counts, plugin version
active_reports	active_reports	List of currently active report objects

Standard report tables (<tt>report1</tt>–<tt>report18</tt>)

These tables are also created by default_tables.sql. Each groups requests by a fixed combination of built-in fields.

COMMENT	Friendly name	Key fields
report1	report_by_script_name	script_name
report2	report_by_server_name	server_name
report3	report_by_hostname	hostname
report4	report_by_server_and_script	server_name, script_name
report5	report_by_hostname_and_script	hostname, script_name
report6	report_by_hostname_and_server	hostname, server_name
report7	report_by_hostname_server_and_script	hostname, server_name, script_name
report8	report_by_status	status
report9	report_by_script_and_status	script_name, status
report10	report_by_server_and_status	server_name, status
report11	report_by_hostname_and_status	hostname, status
report12	report_by_hostname_script_and_status	hostname, script_name, status
report13	report_by_schema	schema
report14	report_by_script_and_schema	script_name, schema
report15	report_by_server_and_schema	server_name, schema
report16	report_by_hostname_and_schema	hostname, schema
report17	report_by_hostname_script_and_schema	hostname, script_name, schema
report18	report_by_hostname_status_and_schema	hostname, status, schema

Percentile columns

Any report* type accepts an optional percentile suffix in the COMMENT:

report3:::90,95,99

This adds p90, p95, p99 columns (one per percentile value) after the standard columns.

CREATE TABLE `report_by_hostname_p95` (
  -- standard report3 columns ...
  `hostname`          varchar(32)  DEFAULT NULL,
  -- extra percentile columns (must be last, one per value in suffix)
  `p90`               float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `p95`               float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `p99`               float        DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=PINBA DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='report3:::90,95,99';

Tag-based report tables

These tables are user-defined — you create them for each tag name your PHP code sends. The tag name is embedded in the COMMENT.

<tt>tag_report</tt> — requests grouped by (script_name, tag_value)

COMMENT syntax: tag_report:<tag_name>

Columns (in order):

1. script_name varchar(128)
2. tag_value varchar(64)
3. req_count int
4. req_per_sec float
5. hit_count int
6. hit_per_sec float
7. timer_value float
8. timer_median float
9. ru_utime_value float
10. ru_stime_value float
11. index_value varchar(256)

CREATE TABLE `tag_report_by_action` (
  `script_name`     varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL,
  `tag_value`       varchar(64)  DEFAULT NULL,
  `req_count`       int          DEFAULT NULL,
  `req_per_sec`     float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `hit_count`       int          DEFAULT NULL,
  `hit_per_sec`     float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `timer_value`     float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `timer_median`    float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `ru_utime_value`  float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `ru_stime_value`  float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `index_value`     varchar(256) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=PINBA DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='tag_report:action';

<tt>tag_report2</tt> — requests grouped by tag_value only

COMMENT syntax: tag_report2:<tag_name>

Same columns as tag_report but keyed by tag_value alone (script_name not in the key).

<tt>tagN_report</tt> / <tt>tagN_report2</tt> — multiple tags

COMMENT syntax: tagN_report:<tag1>,<tag2>,...

Groups by multiple tag values. Column order: tag value columns first (one per tag), then the standard timer/count columns.

CREATE TABLE `tag_report_category_group` (
  `tag1_value`      varchar(64)  DEFAULT NULL,  -- category
  `tag2_value`      varchar(64)  DEFAULT NULL,  -- group
  `req_count`       int          DEFAULT NULL,
  -- ... rest of standard columns
  `index_value`     varchar(256) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=PINBA DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='tagN_report:category,group';

Tag info tables

Tag info tables aggregate timer statistics per tag value, decoupled from script name.

<tt>tag_info</tt> — timer info for one tag

COMMENT syntax: tag_info:<tag_name>

<tt>tag2_info</tt> — timer info for two fixed tags

COMMENT syntax: tag2_info:<tag1>,<tag2>

<tt>tagN_info</tt> — timer info for N tags with built-in field dimensions

COMMENT syntax: tagN_info:<tag1>,...[,__server_name][,__hostname]::[percentiles]

Built-in field names prefixed with __ can be mixed into the tag list as additional grouping dimensions:

• __server_name — groups by server_name field from the request
• __hostname — groups by hostname field from the request

Percentile suffix works the same as for report tables.

-- Timer info by custom tags "category" and "group",
-- further broken down by server_name, with 90th and 95th percentiles.
CREATE TABLE `timer_by_category_and_server` (
  `tag1_value`       varchar(64)  DEFAULT NULL,
  `tag2_value`       varchar(64)  DEFAULT NULL,
  `tag3_value`       varchar(64)  DEFAULT NULL,
  `req_count`        int          DEFAULT NULL,
  `req_per_sec`      float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `hit_count`        int          DEFAULT NULL,
  `hit_per_sec`      float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `timer_value`      float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `timer_median`     float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `ru_utime_value`   float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `ru_stime_value`   float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `index_value`      varchar(256) DEFAULT NULL,
  `p90`              float        DEFAULT NULL,
  `p95`              float        DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=PINBA DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='tagN_info:category,group,__server_name::90,95';

Reversed tag tables (<tt>rtag_*</tt>)

The rtag_* family mirrors the tag_* family but groups by tag value without script name as the primary key — useful for aggregating across all scripts.

Type	COMMENT prefix
rtag_report	rtag_report:<tag>
rtag2_report	rtag2_report:<tag1>,<tag2>
rtagN_report	rtagN_report:<tag1>,...
rtag_info	rtag_info:<tag>
rtag2_info	rtag2_info:<tag1>,<tag2>
rtagN_info	rtagN_info:<tag1>,...

Column ordering rules

The engine identifies columns by position only — the SQL column name is ignored. When defining a custom tag table:

1. Tag value columns come first (one per tag, in COMMENT order).
2. Built-in dimension columns (__server_name, __hostname) follow in COMMENT order.
3. Standard stat columns follow in the fixed order shown above.
4. Percentile columns come last, in the order listed in the suffix.

Testing a new table

Use scripts/smoke_test.sh to verify that your custom table definition works before deploying:

./scripts/smoke_test.sh 127.0.0.1 3306 root "" pinba