Enhance user insights with Custom Measurements & Timing
When we talk about Real User Monitoring (RUM), it’s easy to get wrapped up in metrics—the hard numbers that tell us about our users’ experiences. But…
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In a world where microservices rule and distributed architectures are the norm, understanding how a single request flows through your system can be an overwhelming challenge. But don’t worry—there’s light at the end of the tunnel! And not just one light, but four.
In this post, we’ll explore how visualizing traces in four different ways—with the Gantt graph, Flame graph, Span Node Graph, and our latest addition, the Service Node Graph—provides you with powerful tools to better understand and troubleshoot your applications.
Let’s dive into the key advantages of each trace visualization and how they can help you tackle performance issues, track down errors, and optimize request flows.
The Gantt graph provides a time-based view of your trace, where each span is represented along a horizontal timeline. This is especially helpful for understanding the duration and sequence of operations in a single request. The Gantt graph allows you to see exactly how long each span took, and which part of your system caused latency or performance bottlenecks.
The Gantt graph offers a high level of precision when diagnosing performance degradation, helping you make informed decisions about optimizations or fixes.
The Flame graph focuses on the span hierarchy of your trace. It shows you the nested relationships between spans and how long each operation took in relation to the others. This graph is invaluable when you’re looking for inefficient or deeply nested operations that could be impacting the performance of your system.
For developers dealing with complex, multi-layered systems, the Flame graph delivers a concise way to identify bottlenecks and improve the efficiency of your application.
The Span Node Graph breaks your trace down into individual spans, mapping them as nodes. This visualization shows how spans interact with one another, giving you insight into the low-level relationships between the components of your trace.
The Span view is an essential tool when you need a detailed breakdown of how each component of your trace contributes to the performance of a request.
Our latest addition, the Service Node Graph, takes a higher-level approach by grouping spans to their corresponding service. This view helps you understand the relationships between services within your trace, making it easier to see how microservices interact and where performance bottlenecks might occur.
In contrast to the Span Node Graph, the Service Node Graph aggregates spans into logical service groupings, simplifying the visualization of large traces.
The Service Node Graph is invaluable for making sense of complex requests in environments crowded with microservices, providing a high-level understanding of how they interact and communicate.
WIth four ways to visualize a trace, you can now analyze and troubleshoot performance issues from multiple angles. Each visualization has its strengths, ensuring you can tackle latency, debug errors,and reduce resolution time efficiently. To learn more about our trace visualizations, check out our documentation.
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