[metrics-team] Adding churn visualization to Metrics

Karsten Loesing karsten at torproject.org
Tue Jan 26 09:57:44 UTC 2016


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Hi Philipp,

at our last team meeting you mentioned that you'd want to add churn
visualizations to Metrics.

I just finished a refactoring of the Metrics website part that will
make it easier to extend it.  The main change is that there's now a
metrics.json file that describes all graphs on Metrics and that saves
you from editing Java or JSP files in order to add a new graph.

I also started writing a small guide for contributing to Metrics that
I'm sharing below.  There's certainly more to say, but I figured that
now may be a good time to share what I have.

Do you want to take a look at this guide and give me some feedback
what parts need more explanation?

(Of course, if anybody else on this list has feedback, I'm happy to
incorporate that, too!)

All the best,
Karsten



Contributor's guide to the Metrics website

Dear contributor to the Metrics website.  This guide shall help you
understand the design decisions behind building the Metrics website
and give you starting points where you should look to make it bigger
and better.

First of all, let's talk briefly about the scope of the Metrics
website, which we'll be calling Metrics in the following.

 - What Metrics is: Metrics is supposed to provide easy access to Tor
network data.  The typical Metrics user is neither a researcher nor a
developer and is just looking for an easy way to learn more about this
Tor network they have been hearing about.  Metrics is giving them data
in visual or tabular form, together with explanations that are easy to
understand with as little technical language as possible.

 - What Metrics is not: The typical Tor researcher or Tor developer
would probably want to dive deeper into the data to learn even more
about the Tor network.  But in contrast to the average Metrics user
they could just fetch the original data from CollecTor and run their
own analysis.  Metrics is not trying to be the solution for everyone.
 If we have to choose, we're aiming for simplicity than for
comprehensiveness.

Now let's take a quick tour of the components that Metrics is made of.

 - Data-processing modules: The bulk of Metrics code is running in the
background, invisible to Metrics users.  It's the code that takes
CollecTor data as input and that produces .csv files that are the
basis for graphs and tables on Metrics.  There's usually one such
module per generated .csv file that focuses on a different aspect of
Tor network data.  All these modules are periodically executed by the
system's cron daemon, independent of user requests to the website part
of Metrics.  See the modules/ subdirectory for the existing
data-processing modules.  Note that modules don't have to be written
in Java even though that's currently the case for all of them.  The
only requirement is that there's a shell script to run the module
using packages available in Debian stable.  The remaining components
of Metrics are all related to its website part.

 - Start page: The website part of Metrics is organized into one page
per metric, which can be a graph, table, data file, or external link,
and the start page to browse available metrics.  Each metric has
attributes like a descriptive name, one or more tags (relays, bridges,
etc.), a type (graph, table, etc.), and a level (basic or advanced).
All metrics are defined in `website/etc/metrics.json` and displayed in
the table on the start page.

 - Graph pages: The bulk of graph pages consist of graphing methods in
`website/rserve/graphs.R` that are written in R and using the ggplot2
graphing library.  These methods read one or more of the .csv files
produced by data-processing modules and produce a graph image as
output.  Graphs have a few additional attributes in
`website/etc/metrics.json` like a description and parameters to
customize the graph.  As of writing this guide, there's one exception
with the bubble graph which is implemented using JavaScript library
D3.js and which might soon be generated on the server using Node.js.

 - Table pages: Metrics also provides a few aspects of Tor network
data in tabular form with customization options.  Like graphs, the
data in these tables is provided using R by reading the previously
generated .csv files.  All relevant R code for generating table data
is located in `website/rserve/tables.R`.  Again, there are additional
attributes in `website/etc/metrics.json` that define what parameters
are available to customize table contents and how to format results.

 - Data pages: While most Metrics user are not expected to run their
own analyses based on raw Tor network data, some of them might want to
look deeper into the data they saw in a graph or table.  Metrics
provides all pre-aggregated output from its data-processing modules as
downloadable .csv files and also documents these file formats in
sufficient detail for Metrics users to use them.

 - Link pages: Metrics is not the only game in town, and it's great
that other developers take the publicly available Tor network data and
visualize it in a different way.  Metrics acknowledges these efforts
by adding link pages with thumbnails to make it easy for Metrics users
to find those external visualizations.

 - About page: Most Metrics users have a basic understanding of how
Tor works, most likely from reading the main Tor website.  But Metrics
should give its users enough explanations to understand where all the
Tor network data comes from and how that data is used to learn
interesting facts about the Tor network.  That's where the About page
comes into play.  The About page consists of a list of frequently used
terms and a second list of frequently asked questions.  There could be
more documentation, but more text doesn't necessarily mean that users
will read more.
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