Investigating Performance Issues

Frontend Performance Tracing

There are two possible ways to record performance logging for the frontend:

• Offline: where the values are stored in a CSV file.

• Online: using New Relic.

This frontend performance logging can be enabled by setting frontend.performance option to true, in the configuration service.

To enable online performance logging (using New Relic), please set the frontend.new_relic option to true.

In case the frontend.performance option is set to true and frontend.new_relic is set to false, then offline logging will take place.

For information on how to update configuration options, see Configuration.

Finding the Most Time Consuming Component in a Request

If a Squirro request is slow (e.g when querying a result), you can investigate which component is using excessive time by using parameter &timing=true in the request to see a detailed time report of the request.

To investigate a Squirro request, from your browser, open the menu Tools > Web Developer > Network (Firefox) or View > Developer > Developer Tools (Chrome), and submit the query again. You should see the request in the developer tool:

copy this request, add &timing=true&token={your_squirro_token}, and enter it into the address bar of your browser to get the response.

The timing report should look like the example code below.

Note: time_took_ms is the execution of each component and time_ms is the total execution time. If you suspect the Elasticsearch request is slow, look at the node Elasticsearch\/squirro... in the response to see how long it took.

{
  "timing_report": {
    "wrapped_f": {
      "start_time": 1518611439.118776083,
      "_validate_request_params": {
        "time_took_ms": 0,
        "start_time": 1518611439.1258709431
      },
      "time_took_ms": 36,
      "_run_query_with": {
        "time_took_ms": 20,
        "read_items_by": {
          "time_took_ms": 18,
          "_do_read_items_by": {
            "_read_items_by_query": {
              "time_took_ms": 11,
              "start_time": 1518611439.141078949,
              "_execute_query": {
                "Elasticsearch/squirro_v8_3pwqmqilsz-t3w3u6xts1q/item/_search": {
                  "time_took_ms": 8,
                  "start_time": 1518611439.1428649426
                },
                "time_took_ms": 10,
                "start_time": 1518611439.1418509483,
                "_cache_if_result_not_empty_on_timeout": {
                  "time_took_ms": 0,
                  "start_time": 1518611439.1512749195
                }
              }
            }
          },
          "start_time": 1518611439.1355009079,
          "_validate_params": {
            "time_took_ms": 0,
            "start_time": 1518611439.1356248856
          }
        }
      },
      "_get_query_params": {
        "time_took_ms": 7,
        "_expand_all_aggregations": {
          "time_took_ms": 0,
          "start_time": 1518611439.1336150169
        },
        "start_time": 1518611439.1260149479
      }
    }
  },
  "time_ms": 40,
  "total": 7
}