Optimizing Cloud Native Java, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10. Introduction to Observability

The topic of observability has come more and more to the forefront of software development in recent years.

Observability is making the transition from being a niche concern to becoming a new frontier for user experience, systems, and service management in web companies and enterprises alike.

James Governor

But why should Java developers care about observability? And what the hell is observability anyway?

In this chapter, we will explore the concepts and fundamentals of observability, and in Chapter 11, we will see how these techniques can be deployed in Java applications using open source libraries and technologies.

The What and the Why of Observability

Observability has a reputation, among some developers, of being vague and difficult to understand. This is, in our view, unwarranted—​observability is conceptually simple and should be easy to explain. Observability tools are fundamentally a continuation, extension, and generalization of classic monitoring systems to provide capabilities that go beyond traditional monitoring techniques.

To help illustrate the concepts of observability, we will use the Fighting Animals example introduced in Chapter 8.

What Is Observability?

The steps involved in an observability solution are essentially:

1. Instrument production systems and applications to collect observability data.

2. Send this data to an external system that can store it.

3. Provide analysis tools that allow the extraction of insights ...