# What span types are automatically visualized for Java services?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727>\
**Category:** APM\
**Created:** [December 13, 2018, 11:54am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727 "2018-12-13T11:54:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mwessman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@mwessman](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mwessman)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 11:54am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/1 "2018-12-13T11:54:48Z")

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Hi!

Evaluating Elastic APM for instrumentation of our Java web services. Viewing a transaction sample only displays spans of type DB. What other types should be displayed without manual instrumentation via e.g. Span API? Cache, application, external? Looking at demo application none other than DB span types are displayed.

Future plans for this?

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**Author:** ![Eyal\_Koren](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eyal_koren/32/36830_2.png) [@Eyal\_Koren](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eyal_Koren)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/2 "2018-12-13T12:50:53Z")

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Hi,

Thanks for evaluating our solution 🙂

Please take a look at [the supported technologies page](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/apm/agent/java/current/supported-technologies-details.html) to see what's currently supported automatically.  
We will love to know what you are using and miss the most, here in the topic or [by taking this short survey](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScd0RYiwZGrEuxykYkv9z8Hl3exx_LKCtjsqEo1OWx8BkLrOQ/viewform).  
Clearly there are plans for more automatic support, but we will love any input in order to help us prioritise.

Thanks,  
Eyal.

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**Author:** ![mwessman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@mwessman](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/mwessman)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 1:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/3 "2018-12-13T13:27:06Z")

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Thanks!

That link didn’t answer my question. Given that the Java application is fully supported technology wise; what span types are automatically available? DB, cache, application...?

Thanks,

Mattias

Hämta [Outlook för iOS](https://aka.ms/o0ukef)

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**Author:** ![Eyal\_Koren](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eyal_koren/32/36830_2.png) [@Eyal\_Koren](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eyal_Koren)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 1:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/4 "2018-12-13T13:54:17Z")

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Well, as you can see in this page, span types would be either DB or HTTP exits. No cache at the moment. I am not sure what `application` type means, but if it is your own business code, then the way to go is using our public APIs to monitor those manually.  
I hope this _does_ answer the question, let me know if not.  
Cheers,  
Eyal.

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**Author:** ![digitalron](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/digitalron/32/38224_2.png) [@digitalron](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/digitalron)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 1:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/5 "2018-12-13T13:56:49Z")

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I've played around with it a lot for a few weeks now.

It basically supports Application, usually of the form Controller#method (servlet, RestTemplate) and JDBC calls.

No auto-instrumentation support for JMS, though our company's team is doing some direct agent modification to propagate trace id across a JMS process by mimicking RestTemplate headers.

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**Author:** ![Eyal\_Koren](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eyal_koren/32/36830_2.png) [@Eyal\_Koren](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eyal_Koren)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 2:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/6 "2018-12-13T14:02:04Z")

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Thanks a lot for elaborating.  
We will love to see what you did for JMS, that is- if you can/want to share, maybe even contribute to the project 🙂. Are you adding the trace context as JMS Message property?  
Eyal.

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**Author:** ![digitalron](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/digitalron/32/38224_2.png) [@digitalron](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/digitalron)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 2:32pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/7 "2018-12-13T14:32:04Z")

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Hi Eyal,

Yes that is right, we used JMS message property to propagate trace and are seeing the linked spans under a single trace. There seems to be an issue with the timing numbers though, which we suspect is probably some sync issues in the time stamps between producer and consumer services. I'll provide more info once we get better results and our plan is to contribute that back if it works well for us 🙂

Regards,

Ronald

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**Author:** ![Eyal\_Koren](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eyal_koren/32/36830_2.png) [@Eyal\_Koren](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eyal_Koren)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 3:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/8 "2018-12-13T15:15:23Z")

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Ronald,

That's great to hear (actually read 🙂 )!  
Please don't hesitate to contact us. We can try and assist as much as possible, even for this timing issue.  
Feel free to open an issue in our repo or even fork and pull request if there's specific code to discuss.

Thanks and good luck!  
Eyal.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2019, 11:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-span-types-are-automatically-visualized-for-java-services/160727/9 "2019-01-03T11:23:58Z")

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