Trace Details

The Trace details page in the APM tool is designed to provide you with span-level visibility of traces, enabling you to identify performance bottlenecks, visualize the call hierarchy of your application, and understand resource consumption at the code level. With three different views, including Flame Graph, List View, and Database, you can efficiently analyze and optimize your application’s performance.

By utilizing the Trace details, you gain the following benefits:

1. Span-Level Visibility: Easily explore the details of each trace, providing deep insights into request flow and operation execution.
2. Performance Optimization: Identify and address performance bottlenecks by visualizing the call hierarchy of your application.
3. Resource Consumption Analysis: Understand which parts of the code consume the most CPU resources, allowing for resource optimization.
4. Function and Method Understanding: Gain valuable insights into how functions and methods are called and nested within your application.

Flame Graph

The flame graph in the APM tool is designed to provide you with span-level visibility of traces, enabling you to identify performance bottlenecks, visualize the call hierarchy of your application, and understand resource consumption at the code level. With Flame Graph, you can efficiently analyze and optimize your application’s performance.

The Flame Graph is the default visualization presented when you click on a particular trace. It offers a powerful and intuitive pictorial representation of all the spans that make up the trace. Each span represents a distinct operation or function within the application. Error spans are highlighted in red to quickly identify any errors that occurred during the trace, while the slowest spans are displayed in gray to indicate potential performance bottlenecks.

The Flame Graph provides an excellent overview of the trace, showcasing the relationships and interactions between different spans. By analyzing the Flame Graph, you can quickly visualize the call hierarchy of your application, understand the sequence of operations, and identify areas that may require further investigation for performance optimization.

List View

In the List View, the trace details are presented in a tabular format, providing a more structured and detailed view of the trace data. The following essential fields are displayed for each span:

1. Service: The name of the service associated with the span.
2. Span/Operations to Request: The span or operations related to the original request.
3. Start Time: The timestamp when the span started its execution.
4. Duration (in ms): The time taken by the span to complete its execution, measured in milliseconds.
5. Component/ Tier: The component or tier of the application to which the span belongs.
6. Destination: The destination of the span.
7. HTTP Status Code: The HTTP status code associated with the span.
8. Timestamp: The timestamp associated with the listed service. 
9. Span ID: This field indicates the root cause span of the trace, helping you pinpoint the origin of any issues.

Additionally, a tabular representation of exceptions is provided in the List View. It includes the following details for each exception:

1. Span Exception Type: The type of exception that occurred.
2. Span Exception Usage: Information about how the span exception was used.
3. Span Exception Stack Trace: The stack trace for the span exception, aiding in the troubleshooting process.
4. Span Exception Message: Information about the span exception.

With the List View, you can analyze trace data in a structured format, making it easier to identify specific spans, examine their properties, and understand the flow of operations in more detail.

Database

The Database tab provides valuable insights into the database queries that support the execution of a particular trace. In this view, the database-related information is presented in a tabular format, helping you understand the impact of database interactions on the overall trace performance.

The following fields are available in the Database View for each query:

1. Total Duration: The total time taken by the database query.
2. Max Time: The maximum execution time among all occurrences of the database query.
3. Average Time: The average execution time of the database query.
4. Call Count: The number of times the database query was called.
5. Database: The name or identifier of the database associated with the query.
6. Query: The actual SQL query executed in the database.

With the Database View, you can gain valuable insights into the performance of database interactions and identify any database-related bottlenecks that might be affecting the overall application performance.

Further Reading

1. Analyse App and Service
2. RED Metrics