There is quite a thread on dev Slack discussing the implementation of virtual tables for metrics. Recently, there was also a lot of discussion on (2) where we initially removed a column in a virtual table which received a lot of pushback saying that it is a public API and we can not remove a column like that.
Okay, fair enough. But when thinking about what was written in Slack about metrics and how vtables are modeled, I think that it is currently pending to be re-modelled quite a lot. We will very likely need to do this if we want to support e.g. more UX-friendly querying and scrapping of these metrics. Various people (Caleb, David) seem to be not satisfied with how system_metrics look like. (Please correct me if I am wrong). However, when 6.0 is out and we do not do anything about this, then by what was said in 21539 means that we will not be able to restructure vtable metrics and we will need to have yet another set of metric vtables on top of what we ship? What happens with virtual metrics tables after 6.0 when we will need to (massively) re-work their schemas? Possible options: 1) focus on its restructuralization before 6.0 is out because after that it will be effectively set in stone as that is our public API 2) mark it as experimental and object of further re-modelling 3) keep it as it is and never change it 4) ??? Regards (1) https://the-asf.slack.com/archives/CK23JSY2K/p1716324924466269 (2) https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-21539
