Update SELECT * to return tag values

[toddboom]

Users are getting confused by the fact that SELECT * doesn't include tag values. We should include tag keys in the columns and the tag values in the values array.

[dashesy]

why not include them in a tags section? Whatever goes in comes out, and when pushing tags are clearly separate.

[pauldix]

@dashesy they are included in the tags section if you add GROUP BY * to the query. The problem is that people don't really know about this so when they do the query and see no tags they think it's broken. I guess we could just update the default behavior to make SELECT * force a GROUP BY *

[dashesy]

@pauldix yes that seems to have the least surprise (it threw me off too when I first tried it), it helps to know * will return everything.

[jnutzmann]

I think it could be very useful to to optionally include tags in the results, rather than just in the tags sections.

An example of where this would be used is I have a database of events that happened from multiple machines. I store data like event_code, device_id, etc in tags. When I query the data, I might only specify to search for a single device (multiple codes) or a single code (multiple devices). I want the results to in sequential order (by time). If you have it in the group by, I have to manually merge the series together to get one list and also know which device or event code it is associated with. Returning them in the query results would solve this (it would essentially identify which unique series the data originated from).

Also, FYI... When I tried to run a query like SELECT value, my_tag FROM my_series WHERE ..., the server panics and stops (due to the tag being in the select). I didn't add a bug for this because this and #1989 already exist.

[manuel-huez]

+1

[dgnorton]

+1 lgtm