Instrumenting Apache Synapse
Is Synapse (http://synapse.apache.org/) supported on dynaTrace?
This is the reference to their HTTP transport - not included in any Sensor pack which explains why instrumentation is missing.
http://synapse.apache.org/userguide/transports.html#Non-blocking_HTTP_transport
Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
Sudhaker
Hi Raj,
you can easily add support to most protocols and applications.
Instrumenting a solution is very easy by going into the system profile of your application and adding classes you would like to be instrumented.
Make sure you select the correct entrypoints and allow those to " Start a PurePath". Once you are happy with the instrumentation, you can export
the sensor rules into a Sensor Pack and share it internally or with the community .
In order to get complete PurePaths for applications/protocols which aren't yet out-of-the-box supported, you can use the Application Development Kit (ADK) to tag what you need to trace. The ADK can be found in your download section.
We have posted here an article on how to instrument and use the ADK to trace through Storm, which is a highly distributed real-time event processing system.
Hope this helps !
Matt - thanks for the post. ADK & tagging look very promising - will explore it further.
The flow is like following :- [Browser] => [Liferay/Tomcat] => [Synapse] => [Actual back-end (Tomcat/IIS)] with agent installed at all tiers. Adding a custom entry-point and starting pure-path at Synapse layer is not helping as it creates another dt-transaction. We managed to patch Synapse and duplicate x-dynatrace header in outgoing request but [Synapse] layer still invisible/disconnected from main transaction.
Will keep you all posted.
Thanks - Sudhaker
hi Sudhaker,
if you copy the dynatrace header from the incoming to the outgoing request, then basically the synapse tier will be skipped in the PurePath and you will see what happened before and afterwards.
to get visibility into synapse, you'd have to use the Tagging ADK at two points inside synapse:
- receiving of incoming HTTP request: read the x-dynatrace header, set it (setTagFromString()) and start/end a subpath (startServerPurePath()/endServerPurePath())
- sending of outgoing HTTP request: create a new dynatrace tag (getTagAsString()), insert a link (linkClientPurePath()) and set the tag to x-dynatrace header
this should basically be enough.
hope this helps,
Christian
hi Matt,
great blog posts on your site! 
I especially like the code snippets.
however, there's also a small comment from my side about the code: why are you already creating the new tag after starting the subpath and passing it via constructor instead of just creating it before inserting the link? benefits of this would be:
- this would also work if there are multiple emit() calls (if this is possible) because each link needs its own tag.
- this would also allow instrumentation of method calls between createCollector() and addTraceId(), which could cause problems otherwise.
just my 2 cents.
Christian
Hi Christian,
Thank you for the helpful comments.
My colleague David Miller is the author of the article and will respond to your questions and improve the code examples.
Best,
Matthias
Hi Christian
I wrote the article on the Kweo blog.
You're right. It would be better like that especially for the multiple emit case (which is possible).
I'll test out that change.
Thanks for the feedback !
David
hi Raj,
with the upcoming dynaTrace release, Synapse will be partially supported, especially in the context of the WSO2 ESB. however, to my knowledge this does not include the synapse HTTP implementation, so I assume this won't help you that much.
Netty is a similar case. with the next release we will support the Ning Async HTTP client, which can use Netty underneath. again however, I'm pretty sure this will not help anything when using Netty without Ning.
so the guys at Kweo have to be using the Java Tagging ADK to really tag these Netty calls.
so if you see those as important features you should create RFEs for them: Product Feedback and Enhancement Requests
best,
Christian
Yes, we're using the ADK to tag the netty requests.
provided you can modify the code its fairly simple and just involves adding another handler to your netty pipeline...or modifying your existing handler.
Heres some sample code which would get the tag from the headers
https://gist.github.com/davemiller/7555802
I've left out imports, etc for brevity, but hopefully you get the idea
Dave
Christian,
Is the support for Apache Synapse available in 5.6 or 6.0? I had a call with a customer who is using dt 5.6 and is instrumenting the Apache Synapse.
support for WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus 4.6 (which I was talking about above) was added in 5.6.
Christian,
Are there any specific sensor packs added for Apache Synapse? The customer that is using dT with Synapse had to add custom entry points to see PPs.
Hi Raj. I've forwarded this forum post to the folks from Kweo - I hope they find the time to respond to your question
Also folks @ Kweo has published this wonderful blog - http://kweo.com/application-performance-management-distributed-real-time-data-processing ;; how did they instrument Netty? Same issue - couldn't find Netty's connector inside any sensor packs.
