In the Splunk AppDynamics model, a business transaction represents the data processing flow for a request, most often a user request. In real-world terms, many different components in your application may interact to provide services to fulfill the following types of requests:

• In an e-commerce application, a user logging in, searching for items or adding items to a cart
• In a content portal, a user requests content such as sports, business, or entertainment news
• In a stock trading application, operations such as receiving a stock quote, buying or selling stocks

Splunk AppDynamics app agents discover requests to your application as entry points to a business transaction. Similar requests, such as user login, are treated as multiple instances of the same business transaction. The agents tag the request data and trace the request path as it passes from web servers to databases and other infrastructure components. Splunk AppDynamics collects performance metrics for each tier that processes the business transaction.

Because Splunk AppDynamics orients performance monitoring around business transactions, you can focus on the performance of your application components from the user perspective. You can quickly identify whether a component is readily available or if it is having performance issues. For instance, you can check whether users able to log in, check out or view their data. You can see response times for users, and the causes of problems when they occur.