Dashboards & Visualizations

Postprocess chaining possible in simple XML?

koprai
Explorer

It is great the Splunk 6.2 allows multiple base searches. However I was wondering if postprocess chaining is possible.. That is a post process search is a base search for another post process search. The following is a cooked up dashboard XML that will illustrate what i am trying. I am not getting intended results. Not sure if it is a supported feature

<dashboard>
  <label>TempPostProcessChaining</label>
    <search id="baseSearch">
      <query>|stats count as dummy</query>
    </search>
  <row>
    <panel>
      <title>First Post Process Result</title>
      <table>
        <search base="baseSearch" id="firstPostProcess">
          <query>eval a=dummy+1 | fields *</query>
        </search>
      </table>
    </panel>
  </row>
    <row>
    <panel>
      <title>Second Post Process Result</title>
      <table>
        <search base="firstPostProcess">
          <query>eval b=a+1 | fields *</query>
        </search>
      </table>
    </panel>
  </row>
</dashboard>
0 Karma

martin_mueller
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

I'd say no.

The observed behaviour is similar to the old AdvancedXML PostProcess Module - while you could have multiple post processes underneath each other, one would override the other so you would always have base search | post process, never base search | post process 1 | post process 2. You can see this more clearly if you add | eval c = dummy + 10 to your second post process - it is applied, but the first post process is skipped.
The docs aren't terribly clear on this, but they do say "Post-process searches: A search that further modifies results from a base search." Taking that literally, a post process will always modify the base search... exactly what we're observing here.

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.2.3/Viz/PanelreferenceforSimplifiedXML

Got questions? Get answers!

Join the Splunk Community Slack to learn, troubleshoot, and make connections with fellow Splunk practitioners in real time!

Meet up IRL or virtually!

Join Splunk User Groups to connect and learn in-person by region or remotely by topic or industry.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Data Management Digest – September 2026

    Welcome to the September 2026 edition of Data Management Digest! September brought a fresh wave of ...

Federated Search for CloudWatch Unified Data Store Is Generally Available

As organizations modernize their cloud environments, AWS workloads generate more security, operational, and ...

Announcing Modern Navigation: A New Era of Splunk User Experience

We are excited to introduce the Modern Navigation feature in the Splunk Platform, available to both cloud and ...