Access Key Visualizer

Key Visualizer is enabled in Spanner by default.

Before you begin

To view Key Visualizer, you need the following Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission :

• spanner.databases.read

If you are a fine-grained access control user, you must have been granted access to:

• the spanner_sys_reader system role or one of its member roles.

For more information, see About fine-grained access control and Fine-grained access control system roles .

Access the Key Visualizer interface

You access the Key Visualizer tool from the Google Cloud console .

To access Key Visualizer:

1. From the Spanner page of the Google Cloud console, select an instance.

2. Select a database to investigate.

3. In the navigation menu, under Observability, select Key Visualizer.

Disable Key Visualizer

Key Visualizer is controlled by the enable_key_visualizer database option. The default value is true .

To disable Key Visualizer, set the value of the enable_key_visualizer database option to false . The DDL syntax to disable Key Visualizer is:

  ALTER 
  
 DATABASE 
  
 ` database_id 
` 
  
 SET 
  
 OPTIONS 
  
 ( 
 enable_key_visualizer 
 = 
 false 
 ) 
 

If your database ID contains characters other than letters, numbers, or underscores, be sure to enclose the ID with backticks (``).

The statement can be sent using a gcloud command, or in an UpdateDatabaseDdl gRPC/REST request. For example:

  gcloud 
  
 spanner 
  
 databases 
  
 ddl 
  
 update 
  
  database_id 
 
  
 -- 
 instance 
 = 
  instance_id 
 
  
 \ 
  
 -- 
 ddl 
 = 
 'ALTER DATABASE ` database_id 
` SET OPTIONS ( enable_key_visualizer=false )' 
 

Once you've explicitly set the value for enable_key_visualizer , you can check its value by clicking SHOW EQUIVALENT DDLin the overview page, or using the ddl describe gcloud command:

  gcloud 
  
 spanner 
  
 databases 
  
 ddl 
  
 describe 
  
 ` database_id 
` 
  
 -- 
 instance 
 = 
  instance_id 
 
 

Re-enable Key Visualizer

To re-enable Key Visualizer, follow the previous instructions, setting the value of the enable_key_visualizer database option to true .

When first re-enabled for a database, the Key Visualizer heatmap will be empty for the first few minutes while Spanner collects metrics.

What's next

• Learn to recognize common patterns in heatmaps .
• Find out how to explore a heatmap in depth .
• Read about the metrics you can view in a heatmap .