Real user monitoring VS Synthetic monitoring

[Kundesaibaba]

HI Team,

What is the difference between Real user monitoring and Synthetic monitoring, its uses and important and where we can apply for ?

[r_weber · Accepted solution]

Synthetic Monitoring

Synthetic monitoring is driven - as the name says - by a synthetic test. That is a predefined script or sequence of actions or just HTTP requests. Synthetic monitoring, when using more than just simple http requests to test response or availability can only test what someone has been thinking about before. E.g. if your synthetic test drives a browser you might follow a certain sequence of actions with predefined timings or variance of it: load homepage, perform search, click on article, add to cart, ...
These actions are performed with a rather fixed set of (simulated) end devices also. Simply because you can't emulate all different kind of user/device combination.

Real User Monitoring

Instead of pre-defining the tests/actions/requests that you want to test, you add code (or let Dynatrace do it) to a web page (or mobile app) that tracks each and every action that a real user performs on a website. This (javascript) agent uses the browser's built in capabilities to record performance KPIs and reports these back to Dynatrace.
This gives you insight into what REAL users are doing, what devices/browsers/versions they are using and how they navigate a site - sometimes in ways that the author of a synthetic script has never foreseen.
You get much more accurate data with a wider spread that reflects the actual user base.