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This repository contains the guide documentation source. To view the guide in published form, view it on the Open Liberty website. |
Explore how to enable and customize tracing of JAX-RS and non-JAX-RS methods by using MicroProfile OpenTracing and the Zipkin tracing system.
You will learn how to enable automatic tracing for JAX-RS methods as well as create custom tracers for non-JAX-RS methods by using MicroProfile OpenTracing.
OpenTracing is a standard API for instrumenting microservices for distributed tracing. Distributed tracing helps troubleshoot microservices by examining and logging requests as they propagate through a distributed system, allowing developers to tackle the otherwise difficult task of debugging these requests. Without a distributed tracing system in place, analyzing the workflows of operations becomes difficult, particularly in regard to pinpointing when and by whom a request is received, as well as when a response is sent back.
MicroProfile OpenTracing enables distributed tracing in microservices without adding any explicit distributed tracing code to the application. Note that the MicroProfile OpenTracing specification does not address the problem of defining, implementing, or configuring the underlying distributed tracing system. Rather, the specification makes it easy to instrument services with distributed tracing given an existing distributed tracing system.
You will configure the provided inventory and system services to use distributed tracing with
MicroProfile OpenTracing. You will run these services in two separate JVMs made of two server instances
to demonstrate tracing in a distributed environment. If all the components were to run on a single
server, then any logging software would do the trick.
For this guide, use Zipkin as your distributed tracing system. You can find the installation instructions for Zipkin at the Zipkin quickstart page. You are not required to use Zipkin, but keep in mind that you might need more instructions that are not listed here if you choose to use another tracing system.
Before you proceed, make sure that your Zipkin server is up and running. By default, Zipkin can be found at the http://localhost:9411 URL.
The finish directory in the root directory of this guide contains two services that are configured
to use MicroProfile OpenTracing. Give them a try before you proceed.
To try out the services, navigate to the finish directory and run the Maven install phase to build the services
cd finish
mvn installthen, run the Maven liberty:start-server goal to start them in two Open Liberty servers:
mvn liberty:start-serverMake sure that your Zipkin server is running and point your browser to the http://localhost:9081/inventory/systems/localhost URL.
When you visit this endpoint, you make two GET HTTP requests, one to the system service and one to the inventory
service. Both of these requests are configured to be traced, so a new trace will be recorded in Zipkin.
Visit the http://localhost:9411 URL or another location where you configured Zipkin to run and sort the traces
by newest first. Verify that this new trace contains three spans with the following names:
-
get:io.openliberty.guides.inventory.inventoryresource.getpropertiesforhost -
get:io.openliberty.guides.system.systemresource.getproperties -
add() span
You can inspect each span by clicking it to reveal more detailed information, such as the time at which the request was received and the time at which a response was sent back.
If you examine the other traces, you might notice a red trace entry, which happens when an error is
caught by the span. In this case, since one of the tests accesses the /inventory/systems/badhostname
endpoint, which is invalid, an error is thrown. This behavior is expected.
When you are done checking out the services, stop both Open Liberty servers using the Maven
liberty:stop-server goal:
mvn liberty:stop-serverNavigate to the start directory to begin.
You’ll need to start the services to see basic traces appear in Zipkin. So,
before you proceed, build and start the provided system and inventory
services in the starting project by running the Maven install goal:
mvn installthen, run the liberty:start-server goal:
mvn liberty:start-serverWhen the servers start, you can find the system and inventory services at the following URLs:
To collect traces across your systems, you need to implement the OpenTracing Tracer
interface. For this guide, you can access a bare-bones Tracer implementation for
the Zipkin server in the form of a user feature for Open Liberty.
This feature is already configured for you in your pom.xml and server.xml files. It will be
downloaded and installed automatically into each service when you run a Maven build. You can find the opentracingZipkin feature
enabled in your server.xml file.
The download-maven-plugin Maven plug-in in your pom.xml is responsible for downloading and installing the feature.
If you want to install this feature yourself, see Enabling distributed tracing in the IBM Knowledge Centre.
server.xml
link:finish/inventory/src/main/liberty/config/server.xml[role=include]pom.xml
link:finish/inventory/pom.xml[role=include]The MicroProfile OpenTracing feature enables tracing of all JAX-RS methods by default.
To further control and customize these traces, use the @Traced annotation to enable and disable
tracing of particular methods. You can also inject a custom Tracer object to create and customize spans.
Because tracing of all JAX-RS methods is enabled by default, you need only to enable MicroProfile OpenTracing feature and the Zipkin user feature in the server.xml file to see some basic traces in Zipkin.
Both of these features are already enabled in the inventory and system configuration files.
server.xml
link:finish/inventory/src/main/liberty/config/server.xml[role=include]Make sure that your services are running. Then, simply point your browser to any of their endpoints and check your Zipkin server for traces.
Use the @Traced annotation to define explicit span creation for specific classes and methods.
If you place the annotation on a class, then it’s automatically applied to all methods within that class.
If you place the annotation on a method, then it overrides the class annotation if one exists.
The @Traced annotation can be configured with the following two parameters:
-
The
value=[true|false]parameter indicates whether or not a particular class or method is traced. For example, while all JAX-RS methods are traced by default, you can disable their tracing by using the@Traced(false)annotation. This parameter is set totrueby default. -
The
operationName=<Span name>parameter indicates the name of the span that is assigned to the particular method that is traced. If you omit this parameter, the span will be named with the following form:<package name>.<class name>.<method name>. If you use this parameter at a class level, then all methods within that class will have the same span name unless they are explicitly overridden by another@Tracedannotation.
Update theInventoryManagerclass.inventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryManager.java
Enable tracing of the list() non-JAX-RS method by updating @Traced as shown.
InventoryManager.java
link:finish/inventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryManager.java[role=include]Next, run the following command from the start directory to recompile your services.
mvn compilePoint to the
http://localhost:9081/inventory/systems URL, check your Zipkin server, and sort the traces by newest first. You see a new trace record
that is two spans long with one span for the listContents() JAX-RS method in the InventoryResource
class and another span for the list() method in the InventoryManager class. Verify that these spans
have the following names:
-
get:io.openliberty.guides.inventory.inventoryresource.listcontents -
inventorymanager.list
Update theInventoryResourceclassinventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryResource.java
Disable tracing of the listContents() JAX-RS method by setting @Traced(false).
InventoryResource.java
link:finish/inventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryResource.java[role=include]Again, run the mvn compile command from the start directory to recompile your services:
mvn compilePoint to the
http://localhost:9081/inventory/systems URL, check your Zipkin server, and sort the traces by newest first. You see a new trace record
that is just one span long for the remaining list() method in the InventoryManager class. Verify
that this span has the following name:
-
inventorymanager.list
The MicroProfile OpenTracing specification also makes the underlying OpenTracing Tracer instance
available for use. You can access the configured Tracer by injecting it into a bean by using the @Inject
annotation from the Contexts and Dependency Injections API.
Inject the Tracer object into the inventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryManager.java file.
Then, use it to define a new child scope in the add() call.
Replace theInventoryManagerclass.inventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryManager.java
InventoryManager.java
link:finish/inventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryManager.java[role=include]The try block that you see here is called a try-with-resources statement, meaning that the childScope object is closed at the end of the statement. It’s good practice to define custom spans inside
such statements. Otherwise, any exceptions that are thrown before the span is closed will leak the active span.
Next, run the following command from the start directory to recompile your services.
mvn compilePoint to the
http://localhost:9081/inventory/systems/localhost URL, check your Zipkin server, and sort the traces by newest first. You see two new
trace records, one for the system service and one for the inventory service. The system trace
contains one span for the getProperties() method in the SystemResource class. The inventory
trace contains two spans. The first span is for the getPropertiesForHost() method in the InventoryResource
class. The second span is the custom span that you created around the add() call.
Verify that all of these spans have the following names:
The system trace:
-
get:io.openliberty.guides.system.systemresource.getproperties
The inventory trace:
-
get:io.openliberty.guides.inventory.inventoryresource.getpropertiesforhost -
add() span
This simple example shows what you can do with the injected Tracer object. More configuration
options are available to you, including setting a timestamp for when a span was created and destroyed.
However, these options require an implementation of their own, which does not come as a part of the Zipkin
user feature that is provided. In a real-world scenario, implement all the OpenTracing interfaces that
you deem necessary, which might include the SpanBuilder interface. You can use this interface for span
creation and customization, including setting timestamps.
SystemResource.java
link:finish/system/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/system/SystemResource.java[role=include]InventoryResource.java
link:finish/inventory/src/main/java/io/openliberty/guides/inventory/InventoryResource.java[role=include]No automated tests are provided to verify the correctness of the traces. Manually verify these traces by viewing them on the Zipkin server.
A few tests are included for you to test the basic functionality of the services. If a test failure
occurs, then you might have introduced a bug into the code. These tests will run automatically as a
part of the Maven build process when you run the mvn install command. You can also run these tests
separately from the build by using the mvn verify command, but first make sure that the servers are
stopped.
When you are done checking out the services, stop the server by using the Maven
liberty:stop-server goal:
mvn liberty:stop-serverYou have just used MicroProfile OpenTracing in Open Liberty to customize how and which traces are delivered to Zipkin.
Feel free to try one of the related MicroProfile guides. They demonstrate additional technologies that you can learn to expand on top of what you built here.