track a web request end to end

[gurugogi]

Hi All,

Please let me know how can we track a particular request end to end, whether this can be achieved by configuring Request attribute?

[Julius_Loman]

Tracking a request end to end is provided by distributed tracing, see concepts here. Can you elaborate more on your particular use case?

[gurugogi]

Hi @Julius_Loman,

Thanks for reply.

Lets take an example, consider user logs-in to an web application, search a product, add it to card and make payment successfully, in this scenario how can I trace this particular request.

I know this request will have trace-id, multiple span-ids, how can we track and show this on a dashboard.
Whether it is possible with Request attributes , please let. me know how.
Thanks,
Guru Gogi

[Julius_Loman · Accepted solution]

From the user's point of view, you have real user monitoring of user actions (user interactions with the web or mobile application), which are linked to traces if you have OneAgent on the server side.

On a dashboard, typically, you want some metrics of your important application interactions (key user actions), such as apdex, number of HTTP errors, user action duration, etc.

Then, depending on the complexity of calls from those user actions, you might want to have some metrics of the most important service requests (key requests) on a dashboard. Those typically include response time (median / 90-95 percentile), failure rate, number of failed requests or HTTP error. 

[gurugogi]

Hi @Julius_Loman ,
Thanks for the explanation wrt to RUM data.

consider we don't have RUM monitoring enabled, wrt to backend data whether it is possible to achieve this ?something like using Request attributes or any other way.

Thanks,
Guru Gogi

[Julius_Loman]

If you don't have RUM, then you need to know which requests are important. The most straightforward way is to mark those requests as key request.
Request attributes might help you in request naming for example, but its not possible to suggest the approach without knowing your application requests.