Monitoring Pipeline Processing
We have several asynchronous processing applications that are receiving events from our fleet of vehicles and carrying those events through several processing steps. The various steps are seperated by JMS queues. Dynatrace purepaths put these flows back together using JMS tagging. However, it is not always our desire to have all of these processes in the same purepath. For example, a GPS event may be recieved and split via topic to both the hours-of-service processor and the order-tracking processor. We would like to start a new purepath for either or both of these steps in the flow. Part of our motivation is that we can run into scenarios where we get large batches of GPS events (5000 positions in a big XML document) and the resulting purepaths lengths are too long when we include all of the down-stream processing. Also, having each processor in its own purepath allows for easier business transaction creation and hotspot tracking.
So, that leads to two questions...
1) Is there an easy way to turn JMS tagging off for an agent group but still start a purepath on message receive and gather queue stats? I don't see any sensor options for something like that in version 5.6 that we have deployed, but I see a new JMS tagging sensor in the documentation for version 6. Can someone help me understand the options that we have in 5.6 and possibly how this is changing in version 6.
2) Are there any plans to allow some sort of configuration that would allow us to be able to start new purepaths based on the recieve from a particular queue? That would be helpful in the cases where we had a primary processor that we wanted to be part of the purepath and also have a secondary processor that we wanted to show in its own purepath.
Hi
Well - there is a JMS Sensor that takes care of Tagging JMS Messages. If you disable this one on an Agent Group you will basically "stop" the PurePath on that Agent. The JMS Entry Point Sensor would however then start a new PurePath on the Agent that receives that Message. So - give this a try.
As for your second question: I will check with the team if anything like this is currently planned. I am not aware of anything like this but it sounds like an interesting configuration option. We may end up moving this forum post to the RFE section
Andi
I have to add a correction here.
There are actually three JMS Sensor Packs - you can see them in the Server Settings Dialog under Sensor Packs. But you only see two of them in the System Profile. The one that doesn't show up is "JMS Tagging". This one is implicitely placed. But this is actually the one you want to unplace on those Agent Groups where you dont want the PurePath to continue. Now - how to do this when its not showing up? There is a special trick through the debug mode. I will send you an email with the instructions as I want to avoid too many people following this practice as you can do a lot of damage in debug mode if you dont know what you are doing.
Andi
Thanks Andreas - This sounds like just what I was needing. I will try it and report back.
Turning off JMS Tagging did work. Now, I have a new anomaly. I can't get the JMS receive to show up in one purepath. I have a ticket open with support to help with this config. Camel is using Spring AbstractPollingMessageListenerContainer. It calls receive and then doExecuteListener. I am getting two purepaths instead of one. It is problem is exactly described in the docs here...
JMS Receive Entry Point Sensor
but the solution isn't clear. There is no JMS Receive Entry Point sensor pack to configure.
Hi Chris
The JMS Receive Entry Point Sensor Pack can be configured in the Server Settings. It is a Sensor Pack that comes with the product. It is intended to be changed globally for your dynaTrace Server Installation. Meaning: you need to go to Server Settings -> Plugins -> Edit the Sensor Pack and add your custom Receive Entry Points to it.
Keep us posted on the outcome of your support ticket. This is a very interesting scenario you are having here.
Andi
I don't currently have access to the server panel. Trying to get access on a dev server. My admin is telling me that he can't see anything in the Plugin or Sensor Pack panels with the name JMS Receive Entry Point Sensor Pack. We are on version 5.6. Was it named differently in that version? When we find it, will we have to export, unzip and edit the XML? Or is there a way to edit the classes/methods within the dynaTrace client?
I had a quick look at the Spring sensor pack, but it doesn't include the Spring AbstractPollingMessageListenerContainer.
That could very well be that it wasnt yet extracted into its own sensor pack. Here is a screenshot of my 6.1 installation. If you go to your server settings you should be able to click on "Edit" for the JMS Sensor Packs that you find there. I assume one of the two sensor packs you see should have the same methods that I have in my Entry Sensor Pack.
Ok - Restarting the dynaTrace server caused the sensor pack to show up again. Weird how it wasn't showing at first, but dev is a fairly open environment where lots of things are tried.
We've placed the sensor and it's showing now in the agent overview -> deployed sensors. Took a bit before we realized that it was a protected method, but it's all placed now.
The purepaths still only have one node though. I'm not sure why the Size is showing as 24 and total duration 205.50, but I only see receive(long timeout) in the tree.
I did a CPU sample, and the doExecuteListener is not part of the same method as the receive(long). Is that maybe part of why I can't get one purepath? Do we need to set it as a direct entry point? Or set it to start a new purepath? Any ideas?
Chris - I suggest we think about opening a support ticket so that the engineering team can officially look into this. I am not an expert in JMS but I know our engineers are. If you open a ticket - link to this forum post - attach the PurePaths and maybe also the sampling then our engineers should have a solution for this rather quickly. What I would like to ask you is to keep us updated on the outcome
Andi
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