Distributed tracing for application performance monitoring

A system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, the memory storing instructions executable by the processor to perform a method, the method comprising:
• providing a user interface including a distributed trace indicating in real time a plurality of services invoked to serve an incoming request, the user interface further including associated execution times for the plurality of services, the distributed trace linking in real time each of the plurality of services to one another over time;
• further providing in the user interface one or more spans over time for each of the plurality of services, the one or more spans including information about a particular code path executed for a respective one of the plurality of services, the one or more spans comprising a breakdown of what the respective one of the plurality of services was spending its time on, the one or more spans measuring from start to end of a certain activity;
• providing in the user interface response time information associated with the distributed trace for serving the incoming request, wherein the response time information is based on data from at least one application performance monitoring (APM) agent, the at least one APM agent configured to instrument code and collect performance data and errors at runtime;
• providing for the user interface to enable selection by a user of each of the one or more spans;
• and
• in response to the selection, providing in the user interface details regarding the selected span comprising at least two of an identification of a service associated with the selected span, a time duration of the selected span, and a percentage of a transaction that the selected span entails.

A computer-implemented method for providing distributed tracing for application performance monitoring in a microservices architecture, the method comprising:

• providing a user interface including a distributed trace indicating in real time a plurality of services invoked to serve an incoming HTTP request by an application, the user interface further including associated response time information associated with each of the plurality of services;
• further providing in the user interface one or more spans over time for each of the plurality of services, the one or more spans including information about a particular code path executed for a respective one of a plurality of services, the one or more spans comprising a breakdown of what the respective one of the plurality of services was spending its time on, the one or more spans measuring from start to end of a certain activity;
• associating a trace ID of the incoming HTTP request with a first, in time, service of a plurality of services invoked for serving the incoming HTTP request;
• propagating the trace ID from the first service to each successive, in time, ones of the plurality of services that are invoked for serving the incoming HTTP request, such that the distributed trace links in real time each of the plurality of services to one another over time including the spans for each of the plurality of services;
• and
• providing in the user interface a search field for receiving user input for filtering based on particular metadata, and based on the user input, automatically filtering at least some of the timing information based on certain metadata and automatically presenting the filtered at least some of the timing information on the user interface, wherein the timing information is based on data from at least one application programming monitoring agent.