Metrics and Management

This section describes how to capture metrics for Spring Integration. In recent versions, we have relied more on Micrometer (see https://micrometer.io), and we plan to use Micrometer even more in future releases.

Legacy Metrics

Legacy metrics were removed in Version 5.4; see Micrometer Integration below.

Disabling Logging in High Volume Environments

You can control debug logging in the main message flow. In very high volume applications, calls to isDebugEnabled() can be quite expensive with some logging subsystems. You can disable all such logging to avoid this overhead. Exception logging (debug or otherwise) is not affected by this setting.

The following listing shows the available options for controlling logging:

Java
@Configuration
@EnableIntegration
@EnableIntegrationManagement(
    defaultLoggingEnabled = "true" <1>)

public static class ContextConfiguration {
...
}
XML
<int:management default-logging-enabled="true"/> (1)
1 Set to false to disable all logging in the main message flow, regardless of the log system category settings. Set to 'true' to enable debug logging (if also enabled by the logging subsystem). Only applied if you have not explicitly configured the setting in a bean definition. The default is true.
defaultLoggingEnabled is applied only if you have not explicitly configured the corresponding setting in a bean definition.

Micrometer Integration

Overview

Starting with version 5.0.3, the presence of a Micrometer MeterRegistry in the application context triggers support for Micrometer metrics.

To use Micrometer, add one of the MeterRegistry beans to the application context.

For each MessageHandler and MessageChannel, timers are registered. For each MessageSource, a counter is registered.

This only applies to objects that extend AbstractMessageHandler, AbstractMessageChannel, and AbstractMessageSource (which is the case for most framework components).

The Timer Meters for send operations on message channels have the following names or tags:

  • name: spring.integration.send

  • tag: type:channel

  • tag: name:<componentName>

  • tag: result:(success|failure)

  • tag: exception:(none|exception simple class name)

  • description: Send processing time

(A failure result with a none exception means the channel’s send() operation returned false.)

The Counter Meters for receive operations on pollable message channels have the following names or tags:

  • name: spring.integration.receive

  • tag: type:channel

  • tag: name:<componentName>

  • tag: result:(success|failure)

  • tag: exception:(none|exception simple class name)

  • description: Messages received

The Timer Meters for operations on message handlers have the following names or tags:

  • name: spring.integration.send

  • tag: type:handler

  • tag: name:<componentName>

  • tag: result:(success|failure)

  • tag: exception:(none|exception simple class name)

  • description: Send processing time

The Counter meters for message sources have the following names/tags:

  • name: spring.integration.receive

  • tag: type:source

  • tag: name:<componentName>

  • tag: result:success

  • tag: exception:none

  • description: Messages received

In addition, there are three Gauge Meters:

  • spring.integration.channels: The number of MessageChannels in the application.

  • spring.integration.handlers: The number of MessageHandlers in the application.

  • spring.integration.sources: The number of MessageSources in the application.

It is possible to customize the names and tags of Meters created by integration components by providing a subclass of MicrometerMetricsCaptor. The MicrometerCustomMetricsTests test case shows a simple example of how to do that. You can also further customize the meters by overloading the build() methods on builder subclasses.

Starting with version 5.1.13, the QueueChannel exposes Micrometer gauges for queue size and remaining capacity:

  • name: spring.integration.channel.queue.size

  • tag: type:channel

  • tag: name:<componentName>

  • description: The size of the queue channel

and

  • name: spring.integration.channel.queue.remaining.capacity

  • tag: type:channel

  • tag: name:<componentName>

  • description: The remaining capacity of the queue channel

Disabling Meters

With the Legacy Metrics (which have now been removed), you could specify which integration components would collect metrics. By default, all meters are registered when first used. Now, with Micrometer, you can add MeterFilter s to the MeterRegistry to prevent some or all from being registered. You can filter out (deny) meters by any of the properties provided, name, tag, etc. See Meter Filters in the Micrometer documentation for more information.

For example, given:

@Bean
public QueueChannel noMeters() {
    return new QueueChannel(10);
}

You can suppress registration of meters for just this channel with:

registry.config().meterFilter(MeterFilter.deny(id ->
        "channel".equals(id.getTag("type")) &&
        "noMeters".equals(id.getTag("name"))));

Spring Integration JMX Support

Also see JMX Support.