Honeycomb, an observability platform, has recently launched a major upgrade that promises great potential for global users. Called Query Assistant, this new capability harnesses generative AI to enable users to query data in plain English. This allows engineers to get fast results steeped in accurate insights on code performance and behavior, without prior knowledge of complex query-based programming languages, such as SQL.
The addon is the first of its kind offered by Honeycomb, and it is powered by OpenAI models. This makes it easier for users to build complex queries and glean info from different data types and analysis graphs. OpenAI is capable of understanding the English language and helps to translate plain instructions.
Charity Majors is the person behind this development, serving as the CTO and co-founder at Honeycomb. Majors spoke to VentureBeat, stressing that her company is committed to building developer tools that are easy to use for everyone, allowing them to tackle problems with less effort. She also described the feature as a method of democratizing observability and removing the need for advanced technical tools and knowledge; turning the task of debugging into something that can be done by anyone within a team.
To this end, Honeycomb also offers a unique pricing model; removing restrictions on how much data can be collected and allowing engineers to batch as many key value pairs into wide events as they desire – making the data more valuable.
Majors has commented that the company is always careful when introducing AI in automation workflows, due to the risks and variance that can be caused. As such, they have taken an approach of pairing machine analysis with human intuition, rather than try to use AI to replace it.
At the moment, Query Assistant is only able to generate queries, but plans are in place to enable users to make modifications to existing ones in the future. Majors and her team have encouraged users to try their new feature, giving them the chance to develop their techniques to fully understand their code.
Honeycomb puts emphasis its unique model of observability, allowing teams to scale their services without worrying about obscure or expensive added costs. This platform is aiming to become the go-to destination for developers of all levels searching for relevant insights on code performance.
