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Request Timing Metrics and new Jakarta EE9 support in Open Liberty 21.0.0.6-beta

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Austin Bailey on May 18, 2021
announcements , microprofile , release , beta , metrics , jakarta-ee ,
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Open Liberty 21.0.0.6-beta brings improvements to the MicroProfile Metrics feature, allowing for information gathered via the Request Timing feature to be displayed on the metrics endpoint. Also included are a number of new Jakarta EE9 supporting features, including OAuth/SSO authorization and automatic certificate management.

We have two beta packages for Open Liberty:

  • All Beta Features: a larger package that contains all Open Liberty beta features (including Jakarta EE 9 beta features) and GA features and functions.

  • Jakarta EE 9 Beta Features: a lightweight package that contains only the Jakarta EE 9 features.

This means that you can now try out our in-development Open Liberty features by just adding the relevant coordinates to your build tools.

If you try either package, let us know what you think.

All Beta Features package

The All Beta Features package includes the following beta features:

Request Timing now supported by MicroProfile Metrics

The request timing feature (requestTiming-1.0) is used to keep track of the slow and hung requests for servlet requests with a RequestTimingStats MXBean. The Microprofile Metrics features (mpMetrics-X.X) on the other hand provides vendor metrics that are distinct to the Open Liberty runtime.

Starting with the Open Liberty 21.0.0.6-beta the RequestTimingStats MXBean will now have it’s data retrieved by the MicroProfile Metrics feature for reporting on the /metrics (or /metrics/vendor) endpoint. This functionality is compatible with both the 2.X and 3.X MicroProfile Metrics features.

Below is a sample output of the new request timing metrics:

# TYPE vendor_requestTiming_activeRequestCount gauge
# HELP vendor_requestTiming_activeRequestCount The number of servlet requests currently running.
vendor_requestTiming_activeRequestCount 1

# TYPE vendor_requestTiming_requestCount_total counter
# HELP vendor_requestTiming_requestCount_total The number of servlet requests since the server started.
vendor_requestTiming_requestCount_total 3

# TYPE vendor_requestTiming_hungRequestCount gauge
# HELP vendor_requestTiming_hungRequestCount The number of servlet requests that are currently running but are hung.
vendor_requestTiming_hungRequestCount 0

# TYPE vendor_requestTiming_slowRequestCount gauge
# HELP vendor_requestTiming_slowRequestCount The number of servlet requests that are currently running but are slow.
vendor_requestTiming_slowRequestCount 0

To be able to retrieve request timing metrics from /metrics you will need to enable both the requestTiming-1.0 feature in combination with one of the following MicroProfile Metric features: mpMetrics-2.0, mpMetrics-2.2 or mpMetrics-2.3 or mpMetric-3.0.

To begin recieving metrics you will need to configure the request timing thresholds for slow or hung requests. The following example demonstrates enabling request timing metrics for mpMetrics-3.0, with a sample threshold configuration for both slow and hung servlet requests.

    <featureManager>
      <feature>mpMetrics-3.0</feature>
      <feature>requestTiming-1.0</feature>
      <!-- other features omitted for brevity -->
    </featureManager>

    <requestTiming sampleRate="1" slowRequestThreshold="10s">
      <servletTiming
        slowRequestThreshold="2s"
        hungRequestThreshold="10s"/>
    </requestTiming>

For more information regarding Request Timing with MicroProfile Metrics:

Try it now

To try out these features, just update your build tools to pull the Open Liberty All Beta Features package instead of the main release. The beta works with Java SE 16, Java SE 11, or Java SE 8.

If you’re using Maven, here are the coordinates:

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.openliberty.beta</groupId>
  <artifactId>openliberty-runtime</artifactId>
  <version>21.0.0.6-beta</version>
  <type>pom</type>
</dependency>

Or for Gradle:

dependencies {
    libertyRuntime group: 'io.openliberty.beta', name: 'openliberty-runtime', version: '[21.0.0.6-beta,)'
}

Or take a look at our Downloads page.

Jakarta EE 9 Beta Features package

As of the 21.0.0.2-beta release, Open Liberty is the first vendor product to be Jakarta EE Web Profile 9.0 compatible. With the Open Liberty 21.0.0.3-beta release, Open Liberty is the first vendor product to be added to the Jakarta EE Platform 9.0 compatibility list.

This Open Liberty beta introduces the following Jakarta EE 9 features which now possess their all-new Jakarta EE 9 package names:

The openidConnectClient-1.0, openidConnectServer-1.0, socialLogin-1.0 and acmeCA-2.0 features will automatically adapt to the level of Java EE or Jakarta EE that is already in use, so no change is needed when using them with Jakarta EE 9.

Enable the Jakarta EE 9 beta features in your app’s server.xml. You can enable the individual features you want or you can just add the Jakarta EE 9 convenience feature to enable all of the Jakarta EE 9 beta features at once:

  <featureManager>
    <feature>jakartaee-9.0</feature>
  </featureManager>

Or you can add the Web Profile convenience feature to enable all of the Jakarta EE 9 Web Profile beta features at once:

  <featureManager>
    <feature>webProfile-9.0</feature>
  </featureManager>

Try it now

To try out these Jakarta EE 9 features on Open Liberty in a lightweight package, just update your build tools to pull the Open Liberty Jakarta EE 9 Beta Features package instead of the main release. The beta works with Java SE 16, Java SE 11, or Java SE 8.

If you’re using Maven, here are the coordinates:

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.openliberty.beta</groupId>
    <artifactId>openliberty-jakartaee9</artifactId>
    <version>21.0.0.6-beta</version>
    <type>zip</type>
</dependency>

Or for Gradle:

dependencies {
    libertyRuntime group: 'io.openliberty.beta', name: 'openliberty-jakartaee9', version: '[21.0.0.6-beta,)'
}

Or take a look at our Downloads page.

Your feedback is welcomed

Let us know what you think on our mailing list. If you hit a problem, post a question on StackOverflow. If you hit a bug, please raise an issue.