cannot see the arguments/returns values of method calls

a little more information (description, screenshots, PurePaths) would be very helpful

Hello,

I'm new to dynaTrace. I've been trying to catch a problem that only happens on a production server. I've tried to see what are the aguments and return values of a method whenever is called. I created Method Sensor sules matching all methods of a specific class, and marked it as "placed" and "active and start PurePaths", and made sure the "Method return values will be recorded" checkbox is checkd.

I also went to the profile and clicked on "Hot Sensor Placement" to make sure everything was enabled. Still when any of the methods is executed, I don't see any data. Not on the contributions of a PurePath:

Or on the PurePath itself:

(Note: The hot placement was more tha an hour before that PurePath was captured)

Is there anything else I should configure to see those values?

Thanks

hi Ramon,

based on your description it should record the return values as you described.

could you please take a look at the Agents Overview dashlet, select the affected agent and look at the bottom on Deployed Sensors. if you search for the SendDocumentForm class there, what does it say? a screenshot would maybe be helpful.

best, Christian

hi guys,

before there's any confusion, I want to give a little background information here

ignore getters/setters

this setting will prohibit instrumentation of any custom sensors into trivial getter/setter methods, regardless if they're specified by <all methods> or explicitly by name.
however, just disabling this setting will of course not add any instrumentation or overhead. it depends on which custom sensor rules you have placed. however, since dynaTrace 4.0 and the introduction of auto-sensors the need for the instrumentation of whole packages or classes including all methods should be mostly gone, anyway.
so, as Pierrick already said: you should only instrument what you really need! 

measure explosion vs. overinstrumentation

measure explosion refers to having a huge amount of measures written into the performance warehouse. so, usually just by instrumenting more, you will not get a measure explosion, unless you have a really big amount of measures defined for these methods and also a lot of splittings.
however, instrumenting more methods can lead to overinstrumentation at some point. overinstrumentation will on the one hand introduce some overhead on your application, but will also put load on the dynatrace system that has to handle all the data.

instrumentation of getters/setters

in general, it's perfectly fine to instrument a getter/setter method to capture a specific return value/argument. however, you should take a look at how often you see this getter/setter on your PurePaths, which you can easily do e.g. in the methods dashlet. if you have just 1-10 calls on each PurePath, you should be fine. if you have more than 1000 you should think about an alternative.

hope this helps,
Christian

In my case it's OK as the methods are from a couple of classes only used on a very specific case.

But maybe it would be better if I could specify more restrictions on the cases I want them to be inspected, for example allowing me to put restrictions also on the set caller methods that will activate the introspection of the desired methods. Something like a AOP crosscut expression will be great for advanced use cases.