2060890 - Accelerate early "events" pings after Glean init

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Data Platform and Tools :: Glean: SDK, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Chris H-C :chutten]

Per "Proposal: Early Event Acceleration" we have a mismatch in how event metrics on the "events" pings are scheduled and how they're used for analyses and experimentation in Firefox Desktop especially. Low-activity single-session uses of Firefox Desktop aren't reported via "events" pings: someone could install, launch, look at, and perhaps even use Firefox Desktop a little bit and we'd get plenty of notice that they had from "baseline" pings, but no event metrics via the "events" ping.

Rather than ask everyone to change their expectations about how to analyze these cases, we're going to accelerate early "event" ping scheduling by adding a new, optional, uint configuration property to the Glean SDKs' init: events_ping_acceleration_factor (I am actively soliciting better names). With a value of N it instructs the SDK to accelerate the first N - 1 "events" pings by decreasing the number of event records necessary to trigger the max_capacity-reason ping submission to match the curve y = ax^2. For example, for a default max_events: 500 and a proposed events_ping_acceleration_factor: 5, "events" pings will be triggered at thresholds of 20, 80, 180, 320, 500, 500, 500, ... event records.

(( This is derived by setting y = max_events and x = events_ping_acceleration_factor to solve for a (in the example, a = 20). Then each non-startup "events" ping in a given session (ie, since Glean SDK init) x will have a capacity of y ))

This events_ping_acceleration_factor (I am not kidding about naming, please tell me you have a better name for this) will be controllable via Server Knobs in the same way that max_events presently is.

Comment 1

[BMO Github Automation]

Attachment: [mozilla/glean] bug 2060890 - Early Event Acceleration (#3580)

Comment 2

[Chris H-C :chutten]

All tests were green, so this is now merged. All systems go for this getting a release and landing in Fx157 before the end of the month