Tagging Web Requests Question
Hi Everyone,
I have a client who's wondering about dynaTrace tagging within an application. Ideally he would want the web requests in the Web Requests dashlet to show up with a more descriptive name, instead of the URI. I know we can do integration with Gomez and other load testing/monitoring tools where the Dynatrace tag would be added to HTTP headers and show up with a Timer Name in the Tagged Web Requests dashlet. I also know they could create business transactions if they want to track a certain web request, but would have to be careful in order to avoid measure explosion. Aside from these two ways, is there any other way to tag web requests? I've tried searching the documentation and community, but these two ways seem to be the most common responses... has anyone done anything similar to this before? Maybe a way to tag web requests without using a synthetic or load testing tool?
Thanks!
Brittany
Hey Brittany,
We did something close to this, but not exact. This requires a code change in the application, a splitting, and business transaction.
The quick version is we were able to add a header to our request in the browser with a formal name "Enter Details Page" for example. We then added that header to our sensor so it would get picked up. We then created a BT that split on the value of the header. This only works for AJAX and form posts as that uses Javascript on the client side.
An expanded idea that we didn't do because of time constraints was to use the IIS rewrite module to add the header before it reached the code the dT agent was inspecting. There is a corresponding rewrite module for Apache, but I can't fully vouch for it since I haven't used it. In hindsight I wish we would have gone this route since it can inspect any and every request.
I think you're looking for something more out of the box than that, but I haven't seen anything that does what you're looking for personally. These are a little heavy handed and probably hard to suggest to a customer. Hopefully my experiences can drive you in the right direction.
Here is a link on how to use the rewrite module to replace a header
