Transactions

A transaction is a single traced operation from start to finish. Click any transaction in the performance list to see the full span waterfall.

The span waterfall#

Each row in the waterfall is a span. A timed unit of work within the transaction. Spans are nested to show the call hierarchy.

Common span types captured automatically:

The width of each bar is proportional to duration. Spans that appear late in the waterfall may be waiting on an earlier span to complete.

Critical path#

Spans on the critical path are highlighted in amber. Everything else dims to 30-45% opacity. The critical path summary at the bottom shows the total number of critical spans and their cumulative duration.

A span is on the critical path if removing it would make the overall transaction faster. Focus your optimization effort there.

Reading the waterfall#

Look for:

• Amber spans (critical path): these directly determine the transaction duration
• Wide spans: operations that take the most wall-clock time
• Long tail on a single span: could be a missing index or a slow external service

Custom spans#

Add spans for your own code to get full visibility.

PHP / Laravel#

$span = \Sentry\startSpan(
    \Sentry\Tracing\SpanContext::fromTraceparent(
        \Sentry\getTraceparent()
    )
);
$span->setOp('export.csv');
$span->setDescription('Generate monthly report CSV');

// ... your work

$span->finish();

Or use the higher-level helper:

\Sentry\trace(function () use ($data) {
    return generateCsvExport($data);
}, 'export.csv', 'Generate monthly report CSV');

JavaScript#

const span = Sentry.startSpan({ op: 'process', name: 'Parse upload' }, () => {
  return parseUploadedFile(file);
});

Python#

with sentry_sdk.start_span(op="process", description="Parse upload"):
    parse_uploaded_file(file)

Transaction tags#

Transactions carry the same environment and release tags as error events. Use them to filter the performance list to a specific release or environment.

Linking errors to transactions#

When an error is captured during a transaction, Tindra links them. From the issue detail page, click View trace to jump to the transaction that was in flight when the error occurred.