• Overview
• Required Tags
• Optional Tags
• Example
• Where to Go Next

Many Wavefront SDKs require you to specify application tags that describe the architecture of your application as it is deployed. These tags are associated with the metrics and trace data sent from the instrumented microservices in your application. You specify a separate set of application tags for each microservice you instrument. Wavefront uses these tags to aggregate and filter data at different levels of granularity.

Application tags and their values are encapsulated in an ApplicationTags object in your microservice’s code. Because the tags describe the application’s architecture as it is deployed, your code typically obtains values for the tags from a YAML configuration file, either provided by the SDK or through a custom mechanism implemented by your application.

Required tags enable you to drill down into the data for a particular service:

Optional tags enable you to use the physical topology of your application to further filter your data:

Optionally, you can add custom tags specific to your application in the form of a Map (see example below). You can also add environment variables as custom tags (see example below).

Creating an ApplicationTags instance:

String application = "OrderingApp";
String service = "inventory";
String cluster = "us-west-2";
String shard = "secondary";

Map<String, String> customTags = new HashMap<String, String>() {{
  put("location", "Oregon");
  put("env", "Staging");
}};

ApplicationTags applicationTags = new ApplicationTags.Builder(application, service).
    cluster(cluster).       // optional
    shard(shard).           // optional
    customTags(customTags). // optional
    tagsFromEnv("^MY_.*$"). // optional, add all environment variables with names starting with MY_ as custom tags.
    tagFromEnv("POD_NAME", "pod_name") // optional, add the environment variable POD_NAME as the custom tag with the tag name pod_name. 
    build();

To continue, select one of the Wavefront Java SDK links in the table below.