Separate Performance views into frontend and backend transactions by operation

[adamhopkinson]

Problem Statement

I have Sentry running on two large ecommerce websites, both running the same stack (Laravel) and codebase.

When I look at the backend and frontend performance dashboards, they show different graphs and columns but the exact same set of transactions.

I had expected that frontend would show pageload and navigation operations and backend would show http.server and queue.process operations - but all operations types are in both views.

I've raised this with support, but have been told that this is intended behaviour based on the documentation:

Frontend "Frontend" includes all frontend transactions, without a specific focus on Web Vitals. This generally corresponds to page transitions handled internally in SPA frameworks, such as React or Vue. Note that if you've selected a backend project, this mode also displays backend transactions.

Backend "Backend" puts an emphasis on duration, throughput, failure rate, and Apdex. Note that if you've selected a frontend project, this mode also displays all frontend transactions.

I can see this would be the case for a frontend-type project (eg an SPA) or a backend-type project (eg an API), but for a full-stack project it seems very odd to have views for 'all transactions', 'frontend' and 'backend' which effectively show the exact same data.

I'm using v3.8.0 of the sentry/sentry-laravel composer package and v7.41.0 of sentry/browser and sentry/tracing npm packages (though that's irrelevant if it is intended behaviour).

Solution Brainstorm

Filter frontend to show pageload and navigation operations and backend to show http.server and queue.process operations.

Product Area

Performance

[getsantry[bot]]

Assigning to @getsentry/support for routing ⏲️

[getsantry[bot]]

Routing to @getsentry/product-owners-performance for triage ⏲️

[kerenkhatiwada]

Removing waiting for waiting for product owner label as it has been added to a board.