# Question about Openkit

**URL:** <https://community.dynatrace.com/t/question-about-openkit/38114>\
**Category:** Open Q&A\
**Tags:** user-actions, user-sessions\
**Created:** [January 23, 2023, 5:29pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/question-about-openkit/38114 "2023-01-23T17:29:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![henk\_stobbe](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/user_avatar/community.dynatrace.com/henk_stobbe/32/30434_2.png) [@henk\_stobbe](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/henk_stobbe)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2023, 5:29pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/question-about-openkit/38114/1 "2023-01-23T17:29:42Z")

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Hello,

To keep it simple, it seems that Openkit is used to add the possibility to send user session and action from Apps.

From de documentation

> **[Extend user experience and behavior data](https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/ingest-from/extend-dynatrace/openkit)**
>
> Learn how you can instrument your application using OpenKit, how you can use Dynatrace OpenKit API methods, and more.

I read:

The main advantages of OpenKit are:

Trace web requests to&nbsp;[server-side distributed traces](https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/how-to-use-dynatrace/services/purepath-distributed-traces/purepath-method-level-transaction-analysis)

With Dynatrace OpenKit, you can’t:

Create server-side distributed traces.

I assume that this simply means no purepath/distributes traces are started if you use openKit

but you can see that&nbsp; web requests originate from the APP?

KR Henk

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pahofmann](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/user_avatar/community.dynatrace.com/pahofmann/32/17076_2.png) [@pahofmann](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/pahofmann)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2023, 6:16pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/question-about-openkit/38114/2 "2023-01-23T18:16:43Z")

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OpenKit can be used to generate Real User Monitoring Data for everything that is not Web or Mobile Apps. For example rich clients or edge devices.

OpenKit creates RUM data, user sessions and actions. For the latter you can trace web requests so you see them in the waterfall like with web based RUM.

In most cases you will be able to link the OpenKit User Actions with backend Traces to get a service flow like this:

 ![pahofmann_0-1674497764610.png](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/original/3X/a/b/ab7c80e14c889feee6fb136aaf327b5448c0906d.png)

For some use cases this is not possible though, e.g. if you directly call a mainframe agent from the application instrumented with OpenKit.