HowTo: Observability of your GeneXus applications

GeneXus collects telemetry data (traces, logs, and metrics) of its applications with OpenTelemetry.

This article explains the necessary steps to allow OpenTelemetry for your applications’ observability.

First, you have to configure your infrastructure to support observability, according to the Opentelemetry provider you will be using, and the Observability backend of your choice.

Next, follow the steps below.

Steps

1. Activate Observability in GeneXus.
In Observability Provider property, select the service provider.

• Observability with OpenTelemetry
  • Observability with Lightstep
• Observability with AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry
• Observability with Azure Monitor Application Insights

3. Build any object.
4. Deploy/Run.

Logs and traces correlation

Standardizing log correlation with traces and metrics increases the value of observability.

This is OpenTelemetry’s collection of logs, traces, and metrics:

The connection between Logs and Traces is achieved by registering the trace_id in the Logs.

To achieve this with GeneXus Java Generator, you only need to set the Log Format property = JSON, and the Observability Provider property must take a value other than None.

Java Sample

Suppose you are working in a Java environment and you have configured the following properties:

Log Format property = JSON
Observability Provider property = Observability with AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry.

Then a Log showing this connection will look like this:

{
    "@timestamp": "2023-09-25T05:02:11.812Z",
    "ecs.version": "1.2.0",
    "log.level": "DEBUG",
    "message": "Hello, world!",
    "process.thread.name": "http-nio-8080-exec-165",
    "log.logger": "GeneXusUserLog.GBrain.Middleware.Utils.ResponseExtractText",
    "AWS-XRAY-TRACE-ID": "1-65111441-4939baba8728c6453e80769f@a6ad1d8bfe037e4f",
    "span_id": "a6ad1d8bfe037e4f",
    "trace_flags": "01",
    "trace_id": "651114414939baba8728c6453e80769f"
}

.NET Sample

Azure Monitor Sample

• Getting Opentelemetry logs in Application Insights.

Opentelemetry Sample

• HowTo: Watch .NET logs using OpenTelemetry (with SigNoz)

AWS Distro sample

• HowTo: Watching .NET logs at AWS CloudWatch