Flow Map Overview

Flow maps show the tiers, nodes, message queues, and databases in the environment, and the business transactions that flow through them. This sample shows a basic flow map for an e-commerce application. In the sample, several application server tiers interact with databases, remote services, and an Apache web server:

  • OrderProcessingService is an application server tier with a single node.
  • Sangrah-OrderFulfillment is a downstream business application. Its inner ring depicts node health and its outer ring depicts Business Transaction (BT) health.
  • Back end Oracle and MySQL database services are shown with storage icons.
  • There is a front end ApacheWebServer.
  • OrderService is an application server tier with two nodes.
Application flow map

Connection Types

Flow lines represent connections between components in the flow map. Solid lines indicate synchronous connections. Dashed lines indicate asynchronous connections.

Many modern frameworks use asynchronous patterns even if you do not explicitly call an asynchronous function or method. For example, your application code may employ a synchronous call to a framework or an Object-relational mapping style API, but the framework itself invokes an asynchronous executor to handle the call. These types of asynchronous segments show up as a dotted line on the flow map. See Trace Multithreaded Transactions for Java or Asynchronous Exit Points for .NET.

Request Times

The numbers above the flow lines indicate the calls made per minute to the tier and the average time taken for the request to be serviced; that is, the round-trip time for the request. The round-trip time includes time spent on the network, if applicable to your topology, and the time that the backend server or other process spends processing the request. The calls per minute for a given context, such as a tier, must be one or more for the flow map to display.

Performance Baselines

Splunk AppDynamics automatically calculates the baseline performance for your applications. Once the Controller Tenant establishes prevailing performance characteristics, it can detect anomalous conditions for your application. It calculates baselines by using the underlying hourly data.

The default view for the flow map is set to Don't compare against baseline. You can set the flow map to compare against pre-configured or custom baselines using the Baseline menu.

Flow Map Baseline Menu

If performance baselines are set for transactions represented in the flow map, the flow lines use a corresponding color to indicate the performance of the service relative to the baseline.

  • Green indicates that response times are within range of the baseline.
  • Yellow indicates that response times are slower than the baseline.
  • Red indicates that response times are critically slow. It can take some time for the Controller Tenant to establish baselines for a new installation.

Click Legend to learn more about how flow maps represent data with respect to baselines.

Live Entity Data

By default, the flow map only shows the nodes receiving performance data. This optimizes rendering and enables a quick view of the active nodes. You can set a filter to view the nodes not receiving performance data to help you troubleshoot node issues.

When an entity is alive, it will affect other associated entities:

  • When a business transaction entity is alive, the associated node, tier, and application will be alive.
  • When a node is alive, the associated tier and application will be alive.
  • When a tier is alive, the associated application will be alive.
Important: If the Controller Tenant detects that a flow map is taking a long time to load, it does not load the flow map automatically. Click Show Flow Map to display it.