The Home Page | Honeycomb

The Home Page

Home 

Home displays commonly used queries and breakdowns, your most recent traces or events, and provides a jumping-off point to explore your data. Use this view to become familiar with key system metrics and to check on the health of your systems.

Data 

Charts 

Home displays three charts for your dataset. Traces and sub-traces populate the charts if any of the following conditions are met:

  • Parent Span Id which does not exist to display root spans.
  • span.kind which equal server to display spans that serve a request.
  • meta.span_type which equals root or subroot
    • This field is only auto-populated on Ruby and Golang Beelines.

Note: Honeycomb Classic currently only filters on Parent Span Id. Learn more about Honeycomb versus Honeycomb Classic.

Total Requests/Spans/Events 

This chart visualizes the count of requests/spans/events coming into your dataset depending on the configuration.

Latency 

This chart visualizes a heatmap of duration in milliseconds.

Error Rate 

To create this chart, a derived column is computed based on either your data’s Error field or Http Status Code if Error isn’t configured.

  • If Error is configured and the configured field is a boolean type, error rate is calculated using AVG(IF(BOOL($<your-error-field>), 100, 0)).

  • If the configured field is a string type, error rate is calculated using AVG(IF(BOOL(AND(EXISTS($<your-error-field>), NOT(IN($<your-error-field>, " ", "", "false")))), 100, 0))

  • If the configured field is a derived column, error rate is calculated using AVG(IF(BOOL($<your-derived-column>), 100, 0)).`

  • If Error is not configured, but HTTP Status Code is, Honeycomb calculates error rate using AVG(IF(BOOL(STARTS_WITH(STRING($<your-status-code-field>), "5")), 100, 0))

Table 

The data in the table and the charts are similar. The chart shows a heatmap of the latency and the table displays P50, P95, and P99 latency instead.

Home features breakdown tabs at the top of the page. If one or more breakdown tabs is disabled, click Configure to set up the corresponding fields in Home. Once one of the breakdown tabs is selected, the top five groups in the breakdown ordered by Count descending are displayed. All other data besides the top five are grouped into the Other category. Breakdown tabs include HTTP Status Code, Service, Route, Error and User. To have these fields detected automatically, refer to the Fields section.

If your dataset is tracing enabled, when you select a breakdown we automatically filter out events where that value is undefined.

When you select a breakdown, a bar is displayed next to each metric value showing where the value falls in relation to the range of values for that metric. For example, let us say you have selected the HTTP Status Code breakdown, and the top five groups have a P50 latency of 0.93 ms, 15.75 ms, 0.12 ms, 2.38 ms and 2.45 ms. The bar will be the least full for the minimum of 0.12 ms, and the most full for the maximum of 15.75 ms. The bars for the other values will indicate where those numbers fall between the minimum (0.12 ms) and the maximum (15.75 ms). This gives you an at-a-glance view of the distribution for your result set.

Home page table bars

Recent Traces and Events 

Farther down the page, you will see tabs for Recent Traces and Recent Events. These tables display the five most recent traces or events in your dataset or service, no matter which timeframe is selected by the timepicker at the top of the page.

Recent Traces 

If you have sent traces into your dataset, you will see the five traces with the most recent root spans for that Service. Click on the waterfall icon at the left of each row to navigate to the waterfall diagram for that trace, and start inspecting the spans. Hover over the Details field for each row to see the breakdown of the trace by span name.

Recent Events 

In the Recent Events tab, you will see the five most recent events in your dataset. Click on the expand icon to view the full JSON for each event.

Configuring Home 

If you use a Honeycomb Beeline, Home data populates automatically. If you do not see data, or if one or more breakdown tabs at the top of the page are disabled, click Dataset Settings, navigate to the Definitions tab, and set up the corresponding fields in Home.

Fields 

Duration 

The Duration field is used to calculate the Latency chart. This value should be in milliseconds. You can select a field that is a float or an integer for Duration. To have this field populate automatically, send the field duration_ms or durationMs.

Error 

The Error field is used to calculate the Error Rate chart. When a value is provided for Error, it will be prioritized over HTTP Status Code, which is the fallback value. You can select a field that is a boolean, a string, or a derived column for Error. To have this field populate automatically, send the field error.

This field is also shown as one of the breakdown tabs available at the top of Home. If you select the Error breakdown, the data in the charts and the table is grouped into true, false, and undefined groups by count descending.

Http Status Code 

You can configure the HTTP Status Code field to calculate the Error Rate chart. If it is configured and the Error field is not, you will notice that the Error Rate is calculated based on whether the HTTP Status Code starts with the number 5. You can select a field that is a string, an integer, or a derived column. To have this field populate automatically, send the field response.status_code.

This field is also shown as one of the breakdown tabs available at the top of Home. If you select the HTTP Status Code breakdown, the data in the charts and the table is grouped by the top five HTTP Status Code codes by count descending. All other data besides the top five is grouped into the Other category.

Parent Span Id 

If you have configured the Parent Span Id field, only the root spans of traces are shown in the Overall tab. You can select a field that is a string for Parent Span Id. To have this field populate automatically, send the field trace.parent_id or parentId.

Route 

The Route field is shown as one of the breakdown tabs available the top of Home. If you select the Route breakdown, the data in the charts and the table is grouped by the top five routes by count descending. All other data besides the top five is grouped into the Other category.

You can select a field that is a string or a derived column for Route. This field is not automatically detected.

Service 

The Service field is shown as one of the breakdown tabs available the top of Home. If you select the Service breakdown, the data in the charts and the table is grouped by the top five services by count descending. All other data besides the top five is grouped into the Other category.

You can select a field that is a string for Service. To have this field populate automatically, send the field service.name or service_name.

User 

The User field is shown as one of the breakdown tabs available at the top of Home. If you select the User breakdown, the data in the charts and the table is grouped by the top five users by count descending. All other data besides the top five is grouped into the Other category.

You can select a field that is a string, an integer, or a derived column for User. This field is not automatically detected.

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