Sentry today announced it has updated its JavaScript SDK tool for monitoring applications to provide a more comprehensive view of application health.
Previously, Sentry’s JavaScript SDK enabled JavaScript developers to insert lines of code that would tell them, for example, how many times an application failed. A new release health capability now also identifies what percentage those fail instances represent of the total number of times that application was successfully launched.
Developers can, in effect, better gauge adoption of a JavaScript application by tracking the percentage of crash-free sessions and crash-free users over the application’s life cycle.
Ben Vinegar, vice president of engineering for Sentry, said the JavaScript SDK is designed to provide developers with a monitoring capability that doesn’t require an IT operations teams to stand up and manage an entire application performance management (APM) platform. That approach also eliminates the need to instrument JavaScript applications with agent software, Vinegar said.
The JavaScript SDK consumes tens of kilobytes of memory after it is embedded directly within a JavaScript application, said Vinegar.
In general, JavaScript is increasingly being used to build complex applications, using frameworks such as React, as an alternative to Java. Over the years, IT organizations have developed a certain amount of bias around how Java applications should be monitored and managed using APM platforms. However, as JavaScript developers assume more responsibility for their applications after deployment, they need real-time monitoring tools that can consume JavaScript application metrics and are built in to existing APM platforms, .
Of course, APM platforms are managing more than just JavaScript applications, so they’ll remain useful for the forseeable future. However, ease of observation and monitoring is a significant factor when application developers choose a language in which to build an application, and it’s up to individuals to remediate issues that might arise in production. Developers, therefore, have a vested interest in discovering potential issues before that application is deployed.
Historically, developers have not had access to JavaScript application monitoring tools that they could easily implement on their own. Sentry’s tools makes it possible for developers to identify performance issues, including calls to application programming interfaces (APIs) and other common errors, and address those before an application crashes.
It’s possible, as performance and security issues shift left and developers become more accountable for user experience, that developers might one day instrument and monitor applications on their own – if for no other reason than self-preservation. Every minute a developer spends remediating a production issue in an existing application is one less minute they will have to write new code.
