Service transactions
A transaction identifies a particular type of work within an application. For web applications, this typically means a particular controller/action, a route, or an individual endpoint for an API. When you install the APM libraries on a supported framework, transactions are automatically identified. For frameworks that are not supported or if the automatically derived transaction name does not suit your needs, a custom transaction name can be set through configuration or instrumentation SDK.
Customizing the transaction name
All APM libraries support setting a custom transaction name through the instrumentation SDK. Alternatively, configurable transaction naming is available for some APM libraries. See the section below for supported languages.
The transaction naming precedence in descending order is:
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Custom name set with the SDK
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Configured name
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Automatic naming
The following flowchart illustrates the process.
Set the transaction name via SDK
For information about using the SDK to set the transaction name, see the following APM library instrumentation SDK sections:
Configurable transaction naming
Configurable transaction naming allows specifying a static name via environment variable, or using span attributes to form the transaction name for a request. For more information, see the following APM library configuration section: