Exception tracking

Context

You have applied the [[Microservice architecture]] pattern. The application consists of multiple services and service instances that are running on multiple machines. Errors sometimes occur when handling requests. When an error occurs, a service instance throws an exception, which contains an error message and a stack trace.

Problem

How to understand the behavior of an application and troubleshoot problems?

Forces

• Exceptions must be de-duplicated, recorded, investigated by developers and the underlying issue resolved

• Any solution should have minimal runtime overhead

Solution

• Report all exceptions to a centralized exception tracking service that aggregates and tracks exceptions and notifies developers.

Resulting Context

This pattern has the following benefits:

• It is easier to view exceptions and track their resolution

This pattern has the following drawbacks:

• The exception tracking service is additional infrastructure

Related patterns

[[Log aggregation]] - exceptions should be logged as well as reported to a tracking service