This page describes the distributed Collector profile. For the smaller mode that runs without ASAPCollector and ingests raw samples from Prometheus, see the ASAPQuery compatibility profile.
ASAP is a summary-based metrics pipeline. ASAPCollector maintains selected summaries near the source, and ASAPQuery-backend answers planned PromQL queries from those summaries. An exact backend remains available for query shapes or time ranges that cannot be served correctly from maintained state.
Exact metrics systems retain raw samples and repeatedly scan them for queries. For selected recurring workloads, ASAP maintains compact reusable state as samples arrive. This can reduce query work, transmission, and storage while meeting a declared accuracy and freshness contract.
Summaries may be exact accumulators or approximate structures such as DDSketch, KLL, HLL, Count-Min Sketch, or CountSketch. The term “summary” is broader than “sketch” and includes both exact and approximate maintained state.
- ASAPPlanner chooses a valid logical plan for the complete query workload.
- ASAPQuery control plane compiles that selection into matching collector and backend plans and coordinates activation.
- ASAPCollector observes metrics, maintains the requested summaries, and transmits raw, full-summary, or delta-summary payloads.
- ASAPQuery data plane validates and stores those payloads, executes planned readouts, and exposes Prometheus-compatible query responses.
- Exact backend serves the explicit fallback path and provides the MVP correctness baseline.
A summary-backed answer is valid only when:
- it comes from the active plan and matching materialization;
- its labels and logical time range match the request;
- required windows are complete and fresh;
- its summary semantics satisfy the requested accuracy; and
- every required producer and delta sequence is compatible.
Otherwise the request fails or follows the configured exact route. Missing or stale state is never treated as a zero-valued answer.
The MVP is not merely that the components start. One reproducible paired run must show functional correctness, bounded query error, fresh results, lower query latency for claimed accelerated classes, and lower collector and total resource cost than the raw exact baseline.