Microsoft is extending the features of their Application Insights service to Java applications with a new SDK.
It seems each week holds a new release that demonstrates the further opening of the Microsoft developer landscape to previously uncharted territories. This week is no exception as Microsoft’s ALM Blog has announced a new Java SDK for the Application Insights service. Applications built with the SDK can send telemetry information to the Application Insights website and that data is then available for analysis and diagnostics. Here’s a list from that blog post that shows the types of instrumentation you can add and what you can hope to learn from it.
| Instrumentation you add | Insights you get |
| Server insights: Add the SDK to your Java web application | Server-side metrics of response times, volumes of requests, numbers of users. Alerts on bad performance. |
| Client insights: Add the Application Insights script to your web pages | Page views, user and session counts, return rates and browser types. |
| Availability web tests | Chart response times, get alerts on outages. |
| Add custom telemetry – client-side, server-side, or both | Track how your application is being used by sending custom events, metrics and exceptions. |
| Add the Application Insights logging appender to your logging framework | Explore your application logs directly in the Application Insights portal with powerful slice and dice capabilities. |
Available features include:
- Application Performance Monitoring – Application performance and failure information is retrieved automatically when Application Insights is added to a web project.
- Usage Pattern Analysis – Adoption, interaction and engagement trends become apparent by simply inserting a JavaScript snippet into a web page.
- HTTP Request Tracking – Track requested resources, the number of unique users initiating requests and number of failed requests.
- Custom Event, Metric and Exception Tracking – The telemetry API supports tracking customization.
- Application Insights Portal for Trace Log Exploration – Simply add the appender to the logging framework to explore trace logs using a the Application Insights portal.
The SDK is available as part of the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse.