The power of observability: getting logs, metrics and traces right for your app

Once your app is live, you naturally want to be sure everything is running smoothly. But what if something does go wrong? An error message, a slow loading time or a process that suddenly hangs? Observability, making visible what happens inside your application, means you can track down and solve problems quickly.

What exactly is observability?

Observability is about being able to answer three important questions:

• What went wrong?
• Where did it go wrong?
• Why did it go wrong?

To answer those questions, you use:

• Logs: written reports of events inside your app.
• Metrics: figures and graphs measuring things like loading times, error rates or server load.
• Traces: detailed paths of user actions or processes within your app, which let you find bottlenecks.

Without observability you are groping in the dark. With good observability you find the cause of a problem within minutes instead of guessing for hours.

Mendix and observability as standard

Do you work with Mendix? Then you are in luck. Mendix offers powerful observability tools as standard, straight from the platform:

• Real-time logging: you can always look back at exactly what happened, without complicated configuration.
• Metrics dashboards: clear graphs showing performance and errors at a glance.
• Traces and monitoring: built-in tracing makes it easier to trace error paths and performance problems.

With a Mendix app you often only have to pull up the logs to see quickly:

• Which error occurred
• Exactly when it happened
• Which user or action triggered it

An enormous saving in time, and essential if you want to maintain a reliable, scalable app.

A hypothetical scenario

Imagine this: you have an application live in which customers can book appointments. On Monday morning you receive several complaints that bookings are not coming through.

With good observability you simply open your app's log and see within five minutes that an external API (for calendar integrations) returned an error on Sunday evening. Thanks to the timestamp and the error code you know exactly where and why it went wrong, and you can act straight away.

Without good observability? You might have spent hours working out what exactly went wrong, let alone solving it.

The benefits of good observability

Why would you invest in this as an app owner or product owner? Because good observability:

• Lets you find and solve problems faster Less downtime, fewer frustrated users.
• Delivers better app performance Bottlenecks and performance problems become visible and solvable.
• Makes maintenance and updates easier You see the impact of new releases or changes straight away.
• Makes professional management possible Expecting growth? Then you cannot do without good monitoring and insight.

Our approach at JAM-IT

At JAM-IT we make sure every app we deliver has a foundation of observability as standard. Whether it is a Mendix app or a custom platform, we always set up proper logging, metrics and tracing, so that you stay in control. We help you not only to find problems faster, but also to grow more intelligently on the basis of data. That is how we make your app future-proof.

No success without insight

You do not build a powerful app by adding features alone, but above all by keeping insight into what happens under the bonnet. Logs, metrics and traces are your eyes and ears, and they mean you do not have to guess after the fact about what went wrong. Has this caught your interest? Book an appointment with us, we will be glad to help.