Overview of what this book isn't

Most developer guides will tell you what their book is and/or does. We aim to explain what this book isn't, and allow you to fill in the rest with your imagination! Thus, proceed to this list:

• Will not cover Splunk basics
• Will not cover creating dashboards via the GUI (other than HTML)
• Will not discuss how to code in Python
• Will not discuss statistics
• Will not cover SDKs
• Will not discuss making beer

Splunk basics will not be covered. These include concepts such as searching (finding data, using timecharts, stats, some eval commands, and so on), reporting (making basic pie charts or line charts via the GUI), data inputs (basic file monitoring, TCP and UDP inputs, Splunk forwarders, and so on), and configurations (GUI and web-based configuration editing), to name a few. Creating dashboards via the GUI? Nope. Python will be discussed and sample code will be provided, but this book will not cover the nuances of the code, nor will it teach you Python syntax. We will not cover statistical computation, other than how to practically apply some basic math to create value-based visualizations. We will not cover using the SDKs (software development kits) being used in custom Splunk applications that are external to Splunk (for example, Angular, PHP, .NET, and others). These are out of the scope of this book. Free as in beer? Nope, the choice of hops, starch, and oak-barrel aging for the creation of beer will not be discussed, but rather consumed during the writing and/or reading of this book.

Note

Unless otherwise stated, this book uses Splunk version 6.3 as the development environment.