Introducing a game-changing new feature: Aggregated span view

You can’t improve what you can’t measure, right? This really could’ve been the Blackfire mantra as it’s the very definition of Observability: giving our users the possibility to observe their applications behaviour. Then, with the data, make educated decisions on how to improve their application performance and efficiency.

Blackfire empowers our users by being the cornerstone of their observability strategy. Blackfire Monitoring provides a convenient birds-eye view of an application’s real-time behavior from which they can zoom in on the impactful transactions seemingly degrading the end-users’ experience. 

The collection of different levels of data which we provide allows our users to drill down performance issues. In particular, the Extended Traces allows Blackfire Monitoring to process Spans which is a function call over time – just like in Profile Timeline – and plays a key role in the quality of the information provided.

All the spans in a unified view

With that being said, we are thrilled to announce our brand new feature: aggregated span view. The latest addition to the Blackfire Monitoring dashboard which will be rolled out to all of our users using Blackfire Monitoring.

The aggregated span view will list all the application and service components that contribute to the response time, allowing you to see the big picture and identify performance bottlenecks at a glance. 

A helpful tool for any developer as the root cause of your performance issues might not be located within your code, but within the services it relies on or how it interacts with them. So say goodbye to guesswork and manual investigations as with this feature, you’ll have all the data you need to make informed decisions and take targeted action to optimize your application.

A game-changing feature

The aggregated span view is a game-changer for application performance optimization. By providing a complete picture of how each component contributes to the response time, you’ll be better equipped to identify and address performance bottlenecks, ultimately resulting in a smoother, faster user experience.

It provides a significant headstart when diagnosing performance issues and from there, the performance improvement journey can continue with Blackfire Profiler to understand why a specific span consumes so many resources. Offering you the information you need to deliver the best performance possible for your applications.

Getting started 

We can’t wait for you to try out this new feature and introduce it to your application optimization efforts. So why not try it out today? Simply head to your monitoring dashboards or to demo.blackfire.io to discover the feature.

And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Share your feedback on Twitter and join the conversation on Reddit at r/platform_sh. Together, let’s take application performance to new heights!

Happy Performance Optimization