APM Transaction - could it update?

[cgspohn (Carmen Spohn)]

Hello, super excited about the new APM elastic offering. So much so that I am thinking of an alternative use case. We have a need to track the progression of file across a transformation pipeline. It is like "tracing" the progression of a file from arrival until final delivery. A "transaction", in this sense, is a file that needs to be processed; a "trace" is a transformation or manipulation. I tested sending this info to the amp server using some dummy data and works well, except for the following issue/question.

Each time I send a payload with a new trace for an existing transaction, I get another entry/document for the transaction. I have to send 6 payloads because the manipulations happen every 10 to 30 minutes. I wish I only had one transaction document with 6 trace documents at the end, since it would be easier for the end-user to understand. In other words: could the apm server update/upsert the transaction document based on the transaction.id? To avoid the duplicates?

Otherwise, it may work well for our very edge use case. Ultimately, we also want to know how quickly documents are making through the pipeline for example, very similar to traditional web transactions.

Thanks and congrats on the APM!

[makwarth (Rasmus Makwarth)]

Carmen,
I'm glad to hear you're excited about APM!
Interesting use case. You'll need some custom code to get around the duplicates.
Some suggestions:

• create a preprocessor server that assembles the partial transactions into one transaction document, before sending it to the APM server

• have a script that deletes the redundant transactions regularly based on the transaction ID

Rasmus