In Apstra 5.1, Intent-Based Analytics (IBA) is built on Apstra’s graph-based source of truth, where devices, interfaces, links, routing constructs, and services are represented as nodes with relationships. An IBA probe is effectively a processing pipeline (a directed acyclic graph of stages and processors) that ingests telemetry and then performs calculations, aggregations, and anomaly detection. To make any of that work, the probe must first determine which specific objects in the graph—for example, which leaf switches, which uplinks, which BGP sessions, or which interface counters—should be included in the analysis.

The probe element that selects those objects is the graph query. A graph query is evaluated against Apstra’s graph database to return a set of matching nodes/relationships; those query results then become the scope for ingestion and subsequent processing. In other words, the graph query defines “apply this probe to these devices/interfaces/sessions,” and it also provides the context used to bind telemetry identities (key-value pairs describing the metric source) to the correct logical objects in the blueprint. This is why Apstra documentation describes early probe processors producing outputs whose cardinality aligns with the number of results returned by the specified graph query(s). Without a graph query, the probe would not have a deterministic, intent-aligned target set for analytics, and the same probe definition could not be reliably reused across fabrics or blueprints.