{"id":5576,"date":"2015-03-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/blog\/application-insights-java-sdk"},"modified":"2025-09-16T13:34:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T20:34:38","slug":"application-insights-java-sdk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/blog\/application-insights-java-sdk\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing the Application Insights SDK for Java"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you publish a Java web application, you want a clear view of what users are doing with it and how it\u2019s performing. Your most effective plan for future work comes from a deep understanding of how people use what you\u2019ve already provided: which features they like, what patterns they follow, and what they find difficult. You also want to know that your application is performing well \u2013 how quickly it responds, how performance varies under load. If performance drops or exceptions are thrown, you\u2019d like to be notified quickly, and to diagnose the issue you\u2019ll want powerful filter and search facilities to investigate the event traces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visual Studio Application Insights<\/a> is a service that gives you all of this, with powerful usage analytics, performance monitoring and diagnostic analysis. To use it, you add an SDK to your application, which sends telemetry to the Application Insights web portal. There, you slice and dice your metrics and events and configure the alerts you need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can send telemetry from the server, from web pages, and from several types of client applications, such as Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps. The API is uniform across the different platforms. There\u2019s also a web test service that pings your website at regular intervals to make sure it\u2019s up and responding well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week at EclipseCon<\/a>, we\u2019re pleased to introduce the Application Insights SDK for Java. Here\u2019s a typical plan for setting up Application Insights for your Java web application. Please note, you don\u2019t have to adhere to this order:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Instrumentation you add<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>

Insights you receive <\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Server insights: Add the SDK to your Java web application<\/td>Server-side metrics of response times, volumes of requests, numbers of users. Alerts on bad performance.<\/td><\/tr>
Client insights: Add the Application Insights script to your web pages<\/td>Page views, user and session counts, return rates and browser types.<\/td><\/tr>
Availability web tests<\/td>Chart response times, get alerts on outages.<\/td><\/tr>
Add custom telemetry \u2013 client-side, server-side, or both<\/td>Track how your application is being used by sending custom events, metrics and exceptions.<\/td><\/tr>
Add the Application Insights logging appender to your logging framework<\/td>Explore your application logs directly in the Application Insights portal with powerful slice and dice capabilities.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

What insights can I get for my Java application?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re constantly expanding the set of insights you can get for your java web app, to help you gain a complete 360\u00b0 view of your application\u2019s availability, performance and usage. Here\u2019s what is available today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monitor how your app performs<\/b> \u2013 Make sure your application is performing well, and find out quickly about any failures. This information is retrieved automatically when adding the SDK to your web project.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"graphical<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Analyze usage patterns in your application <\/strong>\u2013 Understand adoption, interaction and engagement trends. Insert a JavaScript snippet in your web pages to find out what pages draw most attention, what the profile of your users is, and where they spend most of their time in your app.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"chart\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Track custom event, metric and exception telemetry<\/b> \u2013 Using the telemetry API, insert a few lines of code in your application to find out what users are doing with it, or to help diagnose issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Explore your trace logs in the Application Insights portal<\/b> \u2013 have your trace logs sent automatically to Application Insights where you can explore and search on them. Just add the Application Insights appender to your logging framework\u2019s configuration (supported for Log4J and Logback).<\/p>\n\n\n

\"graphical<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Monitor the health of your application<\/b> \u2013 After you’ve deployed your web application, you can set up web tests to monitor its availability and responsiveness. Application Insights will send web requests at regular intervals from points around the world, and can alert you if your application responds slowly or not at all.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"a<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adding the Application Insights SDK for Java to your project<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you develop your project using Eclipse, adding the Application Insights SDK for Java to your dynamic web project is easy. All you need to do is install the newest version of the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse<\/a> (By Microsoft Open Technologies) which will be available during the week of EclipseCon, right-click your project, select \u201cConfigure Application Insights\u201d, and provide your instrumentation key. Step by step guide on how to do this<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"graphical<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are a number of additional ways to add the SDK to your Java project: using Maven, Gradle, or manually. This article<\/a> covers all these options in detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can I use Visual Studio Online to plan, code, build, test and deploy my Java applications?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely, Visual Studio Online provides cloud-hosted tools for your Java teams<\/a> that complement your favorite Java tools and services such as Eclipse and Jenkins, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s next?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now that you\u2019ve added the SDK to your project, you can go ahead and add more instrumentation to gain a variety of insights about your Java application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some links to get you started:<\/p>\n\n\n\n