Plugin Observability System - Requirement Specification¶
1. Introduction¶
1.1 Purpose¶
This document specifies the functional and non-functional requirements for observability capabilities in TQPro ecosystem plugins that integrate with external API systems and maintain database backends. These requirements establish a standardized approach to monitoring, performance tracking, and operational visibility across all plugin implementations.
1.2 Scope¶
This specification applies to any TQPro plugin that: - Integrates with one or more external API systems (RESTful APIs, SOAP services, third-party SDKs) - Maintains a database backend for caching, persistence, or operational data - Requires operational monitoring for reliability and performance optimization
The Plugin Observability System provides: - Real-time external API interaction monitoring - Database operation performance tracking - Error and exception classification - Service health and availability metrics - Time-series data storage and retention - Visual dashboards and alerting capabilities - Operational insights for capacity planning and optimization
1.3 Document Conventions¶
- SHALL indicates mandatory requirements
- SHOULD indicates recommended requirements
- MAY indicates optional requirements
- Plugin refers to any modular component that extends TQPro core functionality
- External API refers to any third-party service or remote system accessed via network protocols
- Database Backend refers to any persistent storage mechanism (relational, NoSQL, cache)
1.4 Related Documents¶
- API Observability System - Requirement Specification
- TQPro Plugin Architecture Specification
- TQPro Data Model Specification
2. System Overview¶
The Plugin Observability System captures, stores, and visualizes operational metrics from plugin implementations that bridge TQPro core functionality with external services. It provides system operators, developers, and stakeholders with comprehensive visibility into plugin health, external dependency performance, data access patterns, and error conditions to support proactive monitoring and rapid incident response.
2.1 Key Components¶
- External API Metrics Collection - Captures performance and operational metrics for all external service interactions
- Database Metrics Collection - Captures query performance, connection health, and data access patterns
- Service Health Monitoring - Tracks plugin availability, dependency status, and resource utilization
- Time-Series Storage - Stores metrics data with configurable retention policies
- Visualization Layer - Provides dashboards and graphs for metrics analysis
- Alerting Engine - Monitors metrics and triggers notifications based on thresholds
- Query Interface - Enables ad-hoc metric queries and analysis
2.2 Plugin Architecture Context¶
Plugins in the TQPro ecosystem typically follow this architectural pattern: - Service layer that implements business logic - Client layer that communicates with external APIs - Data access layer that manages database operations - Entity layer that represents domain objects - Configuration layer that manages plugin settings
Observability SHALL be implemented across all these layers to provide comprehensive monitoring.
3. Functional Requirements¶
3.1 External API Interaction Metrics¶
3.1.1 Request/Response Tracking¶
REQ-API-001: The system SHALL capture metrics for every external API request including: - Request initiation timestamp - Request completion timestamp - Total request duration in milliseconds - Network latency (time to first byte where measurable) - Response payload size in bytes (optional)
REQ-API-002: The system SHALL track request characteristics: - External service identifier (service name, vendor, or API provider) - API endpoint or operation name - Request method or operation type - Protocol used (HTTP, HTTPS, gRPC, SOAP, proprietary)
REQ-API-003: The system SHALL record response characteristics: - Response status (success, failure, partial success) - Response status code (HTTP codes, service-specific error codes) - Response status category (2xx success, 4xx client error, 5xx server error, timeout, network error) - Response data completeness indicator
REQ-API-004: The system SHALL calculate and expose latency percentiles for external API calls: - 50th percentile (median) response time - 95th percentile response time - 99th percentile response time - Maximum response time within time windows
REQ-API-005: The system SHALL track external API request correlation: - Internal request identifier - Plugin service name that initiated the request - Plugin method or operation that triggered the external call - Calling context (user session, batch job, scheduled task)
3.1.2 Success and Failure Tracking¶
REQ-API-006: The system SHALL count and classify external API outcomes: - Total requests sent - Successful responses received - Failed requests (all failure types) - Requests in progress - Requests cancelled or aborted
REQ-API-007: The system SHALL classify external API failures by type: - Client errors (invalid request, authentication failure, authorization failure) - Server errors (internal service error, service unavailable, overload) - Network errors (connection refused, connection timeout, DNS resolution failure) - Timeout errors (read timeout, connection timeout) - Protocol errors (invalid response format, unexpected response) - Unknown errors (unclassified failures)
REQ-API-008: The system SHALL extract and record error details: - Error code from external service - Error message from external service - Error category classification - Whether error is retryable - Whether error indicates external service degradation
REQ-API-009: The system SHALL calculate external API success metrics: - Success rate (successful requests / total requests) by service - Success rate by operation type - Success rate over configurable time windows - Success rate trends (improving, degrading, stable)
3.1.3 External Service Health Indicators¶
REQ-API-010: The system SHALL track external service availability: - Time since last successful request to each service - Current service status (available, degraded, unavailable, unknown) - Service availability percentage over time windows - Service downtime duration
REQ-API-011: The system SHALL monitor external service performance trends: - Average response time trends (increasing, decreasing, stable) - Error rate trends (increasing, decreasing, stable) - Service quality score based on response time and error rate - Anomaly detection for sudden performance changes
REQ-API-012: The system SHALL track retry and circuit breaker metrics: - Number of retry attempts per request - Successful retries vs failed retries - Circuit breaker state (closed, open, half-open) per service - Circuit breaker trips (transitions to open state) - Time spent in circuit breaker open state
3.1.4 API Usage Patterns¶
REQ-API-013: The system SHALL track external API usage distribution: - Request volume by service - Request volume by operation - Request volume by time of day - Request volume by calling context
REQ-API-014: The system SHALL identify high-volume operations: - Most frequently called external APIs - Operations with highest cumulative latency - Operations with highest error rates - Operations consuming most bandwidth
REQ-API-015: The system SHALL track rate limiting and throttling: - Requests rejected due to rate limits - Requests delayed due to throttling - Current rate limit utilization percentage - Time until rate limit reset
3.2 Database Operation Metrics¶
3.2.1 Query Performance Tracking¶
REQ-DB-001: The system SHALL capture metrics for every database operation including: - Operation start timestamp - Operation completion timestamp - Operation duration in milliseconds - Operation type (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, transaction)
REQ-DB-002: The system SHALL track query characteristics: - Entity or table name accessed - Operation type classification (read, write, bulk operation) - Query complexity indicator (simple, complex, join-heavy) - Whether operation used indexes (where detectable)
REQ-DB-003: The system SHALL record operation results: - Number of records returned (for read operations) - Number of records affected (for write operations) - Whether operation succeeded or failed - Error code and message (for failures)
REQ-DB-004: The system SHALL calculate query performance percentiles: - 50th percentile (median) query duration - 95th percentile query duration - 99th percentile query duration - Maximum query duration within time windows
REQ-DB-005: The system SHALL track query execution context: - Plugin service that initiated the query - Plugin method or operation that triggered the query - Transaction context (within transaction, auto-commit, read-only) - Isolation level used (where applicable)
3.2.2 Transaction Tracking¶
REQ-DB-006: The system SHALL monitor database transactions including: - Total transactions started - Transactions committed successfully - Transactions rolled back - Transaction duration from begin to commit/rollback
REQ-DB-007: The system SHALL track transaction outcomes: - Commit success rate - Rollback rate by reason (application logic, constraint violation, timeout, deadlock) - Transaction duration percentiles - Long-running transaction identification
REQ-DB-008: The system SHALL record transaction characteristics: - Entity or entities involved in transaction - Number of operations within transaction - Transaction size (number of records affected) - Whether transaction was read-only or read-write
REQ-DB-009: The system SHALL identify transaction issues: - Deadlocks detected - Lock timeout occurrences - Optimistic locking failures (version conflicts) - Constraint violations
3.2.3 Connection Pool Metrics¶
REQ-DB-010: The system SHALL monitor database connection pool health: - Total connections in pool - Active connections in use - Idle connections available - Connections waiting for availability
REQ-DB-011: The system SHALL track connection acquisition: - Connection acquisition requests - Successful connection acquisitions - Failed connection acquisitions (pool exhausted) - Connection acquisition wait time
REQ-DB-012: The system SHALL monitor connection lifecycle: - Connections created (new connections added to pool) - Connections closed or retired - Connection validation failures - Connection leak detection events
REQ-DB-013: The system SHALL calculate connection pool utilization: - Pool utilization percentage (active / total) - Peak utilization over time windows - Time spent at maximum capacity - Connection starvation events
3.2.4 Cache Performance Metrics¶
REQ-DB-014: The system SHALL track database cache operations (where caching is implemented): - Cache read requests - Cache hits (data found in cache) - Cache misses (data not found in cache) - Cache writes (data added to cache)
REQ-DB-015: The system SHALL calculate cache effectiveness: - Cache hit rate (hits / total reads) - Cache miss rate - Cache hit rate trends over time - Cache performance by entity type
REQ-DB-016: The system SHALL monitor cache health: - Cache size (number of entries) - Cache memory utilization - Cache evictions (entries removed) - Cache eviction rate
REQ-DB-017: The system SHALL track cache staleness: - Average cache entry age - Cache invalidation events - Cache refresh operations - Stale data access attempts (where detectable)
3.2.5 Data Access Patterns¶
REQ-DB-018: The system SHALL identify database access patterns: - Most frequently queried entities - Most frequently modified entities - Read vs write ratio by entity - Bulk operation frequency
REQ-DB-019: The system SHALL track query distribution: - Number of single-record queries vs multi-record queries - Query result set size distribution (small, medium, large) - Full table scan occurrences (where detectable) - Index usage statistics (where available)
REQ-DB-020: The system SHALL monitor data volume metrics: - Total records read per time period - Total records written per time period - Data ingestion rate (records per second) - Data modification rate (records per second)
3.3 Service Health and Availability Metrics¶
3.3.1 Plugin Lifecycle Tracking¶
REQ-SVC-001: The system SHALL track plugin lifecycle events: - Plugin initialization timestamp - Plugin initialization duration - Plugin initialization success or failure - Plugin shutdown events
REQ-SVC-002: The system SHALL monitor plugin operational state: - Current operational status (running, degraded, stopped, error) - Time in current state - State transitions over time - Unexpected state changes
REQ-SVC-003: The system SHALL track plugin dependencies: - External API availability status - Database connectivity status - Configuration validity status - Required resource availability
3.3.2 Resource Utilization Metrics¶
REQ-SVC-004: The system SHOULD track plugin resource consumption: - Memory utilization by plugin components - Thread utilization (active threads, thread pool status) - CPU time consumed by plugin operations - File handles or network sockets in use
REQ-SVC-005: The system SHOULD monitor resource limits: - Memory usage approaching limits - Thread pool exhaustion events - File descriptor exhaustion events - Resource allocation failures
3.3.3 Request Processing Metrics¶
REQ-SVC-006: The system SHALL track plugin request processing: - Total requests received by plugin - Requests currently being processed - Request queue depth (if queuing is implemented) - Request processing duration
REQ-SVC-007: The system SHALL monitor request outcomes: - Requests completed successfully - Requests failed due to plugin errors - Requests failed due to external dependency errors - Requests failed due to invalid input
REQ-SVC-008: The system SHALL calculate plugin throughput: - Requests processed per second - Throughput by operation type - Throughput trends over time - Peak throughput capacity
3.4 Error and Exception Tracking¶
3.4.1 Error Classification¶
REQ-ERR-001: The system SHALL capture all plugin errors and exceptions including: - Total error count - Error rate (errors per second) - Error distribution by component (service, API client, data access) - Error distribution by type
REQ-ERR-002: The system SHALL classify errors by origin: - Plugin internal errors (logic errors, null pointers, state errors) - External API errors (remote service errors) - Database errors (query errors, constraint violations, connection errors) - Configuration errors (invalid settings, missing configuration) - Resource errors (out of memory, file not found, permission denied)
REQ-ERR-003: The system SHALL classify errors by severity: - Critical errors (require immediate attention, plugin cannot function) - Major errors (significant functionality impaired) - Minor errors (limited impact, workaround available) - Warning conditions (potential issues, no immediate impact)
REQ-ERR-004: The system SHALL extract error context: - Error message and description - Error code or identifier - Stack trace or call chain (where available) - Operation or method where error occurred - Input parameters that caused error (sanitized, without sensitive data)
3.4.2 Error Patterns and Trends¶
REQ-ERR-005: The system SHALL identify error patterns: - Most frequent error types - Error rate trends (increasing, decreasing, stable) - Error correlation with external service issues - Error correlation with high load conditions
REQ-ERR-006: The system SHALL track error recovery: - Errors automatically recovered or retried - Successful recovery attempts - Failed recovery attempts - Time to recovery for transient errors
REQ-ERR-007: The system SHALL calculate error impact: - Percentage of requests affected by errors - User impact of errors (requests failed for end users) - Business impact categories (low, medium, high) - Error blast radius (scope of affected operations)
3.5 Metrics Exposition and Access¶
3.5.1 Metrics Endpoint¶
REQ-EXPO-001: The system SHALL expose plugin metrics via a standard endpoint: - Metrics SHALL be available via HTTP/HTTPS protocol - Endpoint SHALL be accessible on a configurable network port - Endpoint SHALL support authentication and authorization - Endpoint SHALL return metrics in a standard, machine-readable format
REQ-EXPO-002: The system SHALL provide metrics metadata: - Metric name and description - Metric type (counter, gauge, histogram, summary) - Metric units (seconds, bytes, count, percentage) - Metric labels or dimensions
REQ-EXPO-003: The system SHALL support metrics filtering: - Filtering by metric name or pattern - Filtering by time range - Filtering by label values - Filtering by metric type
3.5.2 Metrics Aggregation¶
REQ-EXPO-004: The system SHALL aggregate metrics across dimensions: - Aggregation by time interval (minute, hour, day) - Aggregation by operation type - Aggregation by external service - Aggregation by entity or table
REQ-EXPO-005: The system SHALL provide metric summaries: - Total counts over time windows - Rates (per second, per minute) - Percentiles and distributions - Min, max, average values
3.5.3 Health Check Endpoint¶
REQ-EXPO-006: The system SHALL expose a plugin health check endpoint: - Health endpoint SHALL return overall plugin health status - Health endpoint SHALL include dependency health checks - Health endpoint SHALL include performance indicators - Health endpoint SHALL be lightweight (sub-second response time)
REQ-EXPO-007: The system SHALL report granular health information: - Plugin operational status (UP, DEGRADED, DOWN) - External API connectivity status per service - Database connectivity status - Configuration validity status - Recent error rate within acceptable thresholds
3.6 Alerting and Notification Requirements¶
3.6.1 Alert Definitions¶
REQ-ALERT-001: The system SHALL support defining alerts based on metric thresholds: - Static thresholds (value exceeds/falls below configured limit) - Dynamic thresholds (value deviates from baseline) - Rate-of-change thresholds (metric changing too quickly) - Composite conditions (multiple metrics combined)
REQ-ALERT-002: The system SHALL support alert conditions for: - External API error rates exceeding thresholds - External API response time degradation - Database query performance degradation - Connection pool exhaustion - Cache hit rate below threshold - Plugin error rate exceeding threshold - Service dependency unavailability
REQ-ALERT-003: The system SHALL classify alerts by severity: - Critical alerts (immediate action required) - Warning alerts (attention needed) - Informational alerts (awareness only)
3.6.2 Alert Behavior¶
REQ-ALERT-004: The system SHALL implement alert hysteresis: - Alerts SHALL NOT fire for brief threshold violations - Alerts SHALL require sustained threshold violation over configurable duration - Alerts SHALL require sustained recovery before auto-resolution - Alerts SHALL support suppression during maintenance windows
REQ-ALERT-005: The system SHALL prevent alert fatigue: - Duplicate alerts SHALL be suppressed within configurable time windows - Alert rate limiting per alert rule - Alert grouping for related conditions - Alert escalation for unacknowledged critical alerts
REQ-ALERT-006: The system SHALL track alert history: - Alert trigger events with timestamps - Alert resolution events with timestamps - Alert acknowledgment by operators - Mean time to acknowledge (MTTA) per alert type - Mean time to resolution (MTTR) per alert type
4. Non-Functional Requirements¶
4.1 Performance Requirements¶
REQ-NFR-PERF-001: Metrics collection SHALL have minimal performance impact on plugin operations: - Less than 5ms overhead per external API call for metrics collection - Less than 2ms overhead per database operation for metrics collection - Less than 1% CPU utilization for metrics aggregation and exposition - Less than 100MB memory footprint for metrics storage and buffering
REQ-NFR-PERF-002: Metrics endpoint SHALL respond within performance limits: - Metrics scraping SHALL complete within 5 seconds for standard metric sets - Metrics scraping SHALL complete within 30 seconds for comprehensive metric sets - Health check endpoint SHALL respond within 500ms
REQ-NFR-PERF-003: The system SHALL handle high-throughput scenarios: - Support metrics collection for up to 10,000 external API calls per second - Support metrics collection for up to 50,000 database operations per second - Support concurrent metric exposition to multiple consumers
4.2 Scalability Requirements¶
REQ-NFR-SCALE-001: The system SHALL scale with plugin growth: - Support addition of new external API integrations without configuration changes - Support addition of new database entities without configuration changes - Support increasing metric cardinality up to 100,000 unique time series
REQ-NFR-SCALE-002: The system SHALL manage metric cardinality: - Limit high-cardinality dimensions (avoid unbounded label values) - Implement metric aggregation to reduce cardinality where appropriate - Support metric sampling for extreme high-volume scenarios
4.3 Reliability Requirements¶
REQ-NFR-REL-001: Metrics collection SHALL be resilient: - Metrics collection failures SHALL NOT cause plugin operation failures - Metrics collection SHALL continue during partial system degradation - Metrics collection SHALL recover automatically after transient failures
REQ-NFR-REL-002: The system SHALL handle metrics overflow: - Implement buffering for temporary metric storage - Implement graceful degradation when metric buffers are full - Log warnings when metric data is dropped
REQ-NFR-REL-003: The system SHALL ensure metric accuracy: - Counter metrics SHALL be monotonically increasing - Gauge metrics SHALL reflect current state accurately - Timing metrics SHALL use high-resolution timestamps - Metric timestamps SHALL be synchronized with system time
4.4 Security Requirements¶
REQ-NFR-SEC-001: Metrics SHALL NOT expose sensitive information: - Metrics SHALL NOT contain personally identifiable information (PII) - Metrics SHALL NOT contain authentication credentials or tokens - Metrics SHALL NOT contain business-sensitive data values - Error messages in metrics SHALL be sanitized of sensitive data
REQ-NFR-SEC-002: Metrics endpoint SHALL be secured: - Metrics endpoint SHALL support authentication - Metrics endpoint access SHALL be restricted to authorized consumers - Metrics endpoint SHALL support encrypted transport (TLS/HTTPS) - Metrics endpoint SHALL log access attempts for audit purposes
REQ-NFR-SEC-003: The system SHALL protect against metrics-based attacks: - Rate limiting on metrics endpoint to prevent denial of service - Protection against metric injection or manipulation - Validation of metric names and labels to prevent injection attacks
4.5 Maintainability Requirements¶
REQ-NFR-MAINT-001: The system SHALL support operational maintenance: - Metrics collection MAY be disabled without plugin restart - Metrics collection verbosity MAY be adjusted at runtime - Individual metric categories MAY be enabled/disabled independently
REQ-NFR-MAINT-002: The system SHALL provide diagnostic capabilities: - Metrics collection health status accessible via plugin admin interface - Metrics collection errors logged to standard logging system - Metrics collection performance statistics available for troubleshooting
REQ-NFR-MAINT-003: The system SHALL support configuration management: - Metrics collection configuration SHALL be externalized from code - Configuration changes SHALL take effect without plugin restart (where possible) - Configuration validation SHALL occur before application - Invalid configuration SHALL be rejected with clear error messages
4.6 Compatibility Requirements¶
REQ-NFR-COMPAT-001: The system SHALL support standard metric formats: - Metrics SHALL be exposable in at least one industry-standard format - Metric format SHALL be compatible with common time-series databases - Metric format SHALL be compatible with common visualization tools
REQ-NFR-COMPAT-002: The system SHALL integrate with existing infrastructure: - Metrics SHALL be discoverable by monitoring systems - Metrics endpoint SHALL be compatible with common scraping agents - Health check endpoint SHALL be compatible with orchestration platforms
5. Metrics Specification¶
5.1 External API Metric Catalog¶
| Metric Name Pattern | Type | Dimensions | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
plugin.api.requests.total |
Counter | service, operation, status | Total external API requests |
plugin.api.request.duration |
Histogram | service, operation, status | External API request duration |
plugin.api.errors.total |
Counter | service, operation, error_type, error_code | External API errors by classification |
plugin.api.response.size |
Histogram | service, operation | Response payload size in bytes |
plugin.api.retries.total |
Counter | service, operation, attempt | Retry attempts per request |
plugin.api.circuit_breaker.state |
Gauge | service | Circuit breaker state (0=closed, 1=open, 2=half-open) |
plugin.api.circuit_breaker.trips.total |
Counter | service | Circuit breaker state transitions to open |
plugin.api.rate_limit.rejected.total |
Counter | service | Requests rejected due to rate limiting |
plugin.api.rate_limit.utilization |
Gauge | service | Current rate limit utilization (0-1) |
5.2 Database Metric Catalog¶
| Metric Name Pattern | Type | Dimensions | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
plugin.db.queries.total |
Counter | entity, operation | Total database operations |
plugin.db.query.duration |
Histogram | entity, operation | Query execution duration |
plugin.db.records.total |
Counter | entity, operation | Records affected or returned |
plugin.db.transactions.total |
Counter | entity, status | Database transactions |
plugin.db.transaction.duration |
Histogram | entity, status | Transaction duration |
plugin.db.connections.active |
Gauge | - | Active database connections |
plugin.db.connections.idle |
Gauge | - | Idle database connections in pool |
plugin.db.connections.wait_time |
Histogram | - | Time waiting for connection |
plugin.db.connections.created.total |
Counter | - | Connections created |
plugin.db.connections.failed.total |
Counter | reason | Failed connection acquisitions |
plugin.db.cache.requests.total |
Counter | entity, operation | Cache access requests |
plugin.db.cache.hits.total |
Counter | entity | Cache hits |
plugin.db.cache.misses.total |
Counter | entity | Cache misses |
plugin.db.cache.size |
Gauge | - | Number of cached entries |
plugin.db.cache.evictions.total |
Counter | reason | Cache evictions |
5.3 Service Health Metric Catalog¶
| Metric Name Pattern | Type | Dimensions | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
plugin.service.status |
Gauge | - | Service operational status (0=down, 1=degraded, 2=up) |
plugin.service.uptime.seconds |
Gauge | - | Time since plugin initialization |
plugin.service.requests.total |
Counter | operation | Requests received by plugin |
plugin.service.request.duration |
Histogram | operation, status | Request processing duration |
plugin.service.errors.total |
Counter | component, error_type, severity | Plugin errors by classification |
plugin.service.dependency.status |
Gauge | dependency | Dependency health status (0=down, 1=degraded, 2=up) |
plugin.service.threads.active |
Gauge | - | Active thread count |
plugin.service.memory.used |
Gauge | - | Memory utilization in bytes |
5.4 Dimension Specifications¶
Common Dimensions:
- service - External service name (e.g., "amadeus-api", "booking-api", "payment-gateway")
- operation - Operation or method name (e.g., "searchFlights", "createBooking", "getLocations")
- status - Operation outcome (e.g., "success", "failure", "timeout")
- entity - Database entity or table name (e.g., "AirportEntity", "HotelEntity", "BookingCache")
- error_type - Error classification (e.g., "client_error", "server_error", "network_error", "timeout")
- error_code - Specific error code from external service or database
Dimension Cardinality Guidelines: - Service names: Typically 5-20 unique values per plugin - Operation names: Typically 10-100 unique values per plugin - Entity names: Typically 5-50 unique values per plugin - Status values: Limited set (success, failure, timeout, etc.) - Error types: Limited set (10-20 categories) - Error codes: Potentially high cardinality - implement aggregation or sampling
6. Dashboard Specifications¶
6.1 External API Performance Dashboard¶
Purpose: Provide real-time visibility into external API interaction health and performance
Required Panels: 1. API Request Rate - Time-series graph showing requests per second by service 2. API Success Rate - Percentage of successful requests vs failed requests 3. API Response Time Distribution - Histogram or heatmap of response times 4. API Response Time Percentiles - Line graph of p50, p95, p99 latencies by service 5. API Error Rate by Type - Stacked area chart of errors classified by type 6. Top 5 Slowest Operations - Table showing operations with highest average latency 7. Top 5 Highest Error Operations - Table showing operations with highest error rates 8. External Service Status - Status indicators for each external service dependency 9. Circuit Breaker Status - Current state of circuit breakers per service 10. Rate Limit Utilization - Gauge showing proximity to rate limits
Time Range: Default to last 1 hour, support selection of 15m, 1h, 6h, 24h, 7d
6.2 Database Performance Dashboard¶
Purpose: Provide visibility into database operation performance and connection health
Required Panels: 1. Query Rate - Time-series graph showing queries per second by operation type 2. Query Duration Percentiles - Line graph of p50, p95, p99 query durations by entity 3. Records Processed - Time-series showing records read/written per second 4. Connection Pool Status - Stacked area chart showing active, idle, waiting connections 5. Connection Wait Time - Histogram of connection acquisition wait times 6. Transaction Rate - Time-series showing transactions per second 7. Transaction Success Rate - Percentage of committed vs rolled back transactions 8. Cache Hit Rate - Percentage of cache hits vs misses by entity 9. Slowest Queries - Table of operations with highest average duration 10. Connection Pool Exhaustion Events - Count of failed connection acquisitions
Time Range: Default to last 1 hour, support selection of 15m, 1h, 6h, 24h, 7d
6.3 Plugin Health Overview Dashboard¶
Purpose: Provide high-level health and operational status of the plugin
Required Panels: 1. Plugin Status - Large status indicator (UP, DEGRADED, DOWN) 2. Dependency Status Matrix - Status grid showing all dependencies (APIs, database, config) 3. Request Throughput - Time-series of plugin requests per second 4. Request Success Rate - Percentage of successful plugin operations 5. Error Rate - Time-series of errors per second by severity 6. Resource Utilization - Gauges for memory, threads, connections 7. Recent Alerts - Table of recent alert triggers and resolutions 8. Service Uptime - Time since last restart, availability percentage 9. Top Errors - Table of most frequent error types in last 24 hours 10. Performance SLA Status - Indicators showing if SLA thresholds are met
Time Range: Default to last 6 hours for operational overview
7. Alert Rule Specifications¶
7.1 External API Alerts¶
ALERT-API-001: High External API Error Rate - Condition: Error rate exceeds 10% of total requests for 5 consecutive minutes - Severity: Warning - Action: Notify operations team, investigate external service health - Escalation: Escalate to Critical if error rate exceeds 25%
ALERT-API-002: External API Response Time Degradation - Condition: P95 response time exceeds baseline by 100% or exceeds 10 seconds for 10 minutes - Severity: Warning - Action: Investigate external service performance, check for throttling - Escalation: Escalate to Critical if P95 exceeds 30 seconds
ALERT-API-003: External Service Unavailable - Condition: All requests to a specific external service fail for 3 consecutive minutes - Severity: Critical - Action: Immediate investigation, activate failover procedures if available - Escalation: Page on-call engineer if unavailable for 10 minutes
ALERT-API-004: Circuit Breaker Open - Condition: Circuit breaker transitions to open state for any external service - Severity: Warning - Action: Notify operations team, external service experiencing issues - Escalation: Escalate to Critical if circuit breaker remains open for 15 minutes
ALERT-API-005: Rate Limit Approaching - Condition: Rate limit utilization exceeds 80% for 5 minutes - Severity: Informational - Action: Monitor for capacity planning, consider rate limit increase - Escalation: Escalate to Warning if utilization exceeds 95%
7.2 Database Alerts¶
ALERT-DB-001: Slow Database Queries - Condition: P95 query duration exceeds 1 second for 10 consecutive minutes - Severity: Warning - Action: Investigate query performance, check for missing indexes - Escalation: Escalate to Critical if P95 exceeds 5 seconds
ALERT-DB-002: Connection Pool Exhaustion - Condition: Failed connection acquisitions occur, or pool at 100% utilization for 3 minutes - Severity: Critical - Action: Immediate investigation, consider increasing pool size - Escalation: Page on-call engineer immediately
ALERT-DB-003: High Transaction Rollback Rate - Condition: Transaction rollback rate exceeds 10% for 10 consecutive minutes - Severity: Warning - Action: Investigate application logic, check for deadlocks or constraint violations - Escalation: Escalate to Critical if rollback rate exceeds 25%
ALERT-DB-004: Cache Hit Rate Degradation - Condition: Cache hit rate drops below 50% for entity types with expected high hit rates - Severity: Informational - Action: Investigate cache eviction patterns, consider cache size increase - Escalation: No automatic escalation
ALERT-DB-005: Database Connectivity Lost - Condition: No successful database operations for 2 consecutive minutes - Severity: Critical - Action: Immediate investigation, check database server health, network connectivity - Escalation: Page on-call engineer immediately
7.3 Service Health Alerts¶
ALERT-SVC-001: Plugin Service Degraded - Condition: Plugin health status transitions to DEGRADED state - Severity: Warning - Action: Investigate cause of degradation (dependencies, errors, performance) - Escalation: Escalate to Critical if degraded for 15 minutes
ALERT-SVC-002: Plugin Service Down - Condition: Plugin health status transitions to DOWN state - Severity: Critical - Action: Immediate investigation, attempt automatic recovery, manual intervention if needed - Escalation: Page on-call engineer immediately
ALERT-SVC-003: High Plugin Error Rate - Condition: Plugin internal error rate exceeds 5% of requests for 5 minutes - Severity: Warning - Action: Investigate error logs, identify error patterns - Escalation: Escalate to Critical if error rate exceeds 15%
ALERT-SVC-004: Resource Exhaustion - Condition: Memory utilization exceeds 90%, or thread pool exhausted, or file handles exhausted - Severity: Critical - Action: Investigate resource leak, consider plugin restart, scale resources - Escalation: Page on-call engineer if not resolved within 10 minutes
ALERT-SVC-005: Dependency Unavailable - Condition: Required dependency (external API, database, configuration) unavailable - Severity: Critical (if required), Warning (if optional) - Action: Investigate dependency health, activate fallback if available - Escalation: Page on-call engineer for required dependencies
8. Testing Requirements¶
8.1 Functional Testing¶
REQ-TEST-001: Metrics collection SHALL be validated through functional tests: - Unit tests for metric recording functions - Integration tests for end-to-end metric collection - Verification that all defined metrics are produced - Verification that metric values are accurate
REQ-TEST-002: Metrics endpoint SHALL be tested for: - Correct response format - Complete metric coverage - Acceptable response time - Authentication and authorization enforcement
REQ-TEST-003: Alert rules SHALL be validated through tests: - Simulated conditions triggering alerts - Alert firing within expected time windows - Alert resolution when conditions clear - Alert suppression and deduplication
8.2 Performance Testing¶
REQ-TEST-004: Metrics collection performance impact SHALL be measured: - Baseline performance without metrics collection - Performance with metrics collection enabled - Overhead quantification meeting REQ-NFR-PERF-001 - Performance under high load conditions
REQ-TEST-005: Metrics endpoint performance SHALL be tested: - Response time under normal load - Response time under concurrent scraping - Response time with large metric cardinality - Behavior under denial of service conditions
8.3 Reliability Testing¶
REQ-TEST-006: Metrics collection SHALL be tested for resilience: - Behavior when metric storage is full - Behavior when metric exposition endpoint is unavailable - Recovery after transient failures - Continued plugin operation when metrics collection fails
8.4 Security Testing¶
REQ-TEST-007: Metrics security SHALL be validated: - Absence of PII or sensitive data in metrics - Enforcement of authentication on metrics endpoint - Protection against metric injection attacks - Secure transport (TLS) functionality
9. Documentation Requirements¶
9.1 Operational Documentation¶
REQ-DOC-001: The following operational documentation SHALL be provided: - List of all metrics with descriptions, types, and dimensions - Dashboard usage guide with panel descriptions - Alert rule definitions with response procedures - Runbook for common operational scenarios - Troubleshooting guide for observability issues
REQ-DOC-002: Metric documentation SHALL include: - Metric naming conventions - Dimension descriptions and allowed values - Metric interpretation guidelines - Query examples for common use cases
9.2 Development Documentation¶
REQ-DOC-003: The following development documentation SHALL be provided: - Architecture overview of observability implementation - Integration guide for adding observability to new plugins - Code examples for instrumenting external API calls - Code examples for instrumenting database operations - Guidelines for adding custom metrics
9.3 Configuration Documentation¶
REQ-DOC-004: Configuration documentation SHALL include: - All configuration parameters with descriptions - Default values and recommended values - Configuration examples for common scenarios - Configuration migration guide for upgrades
10. Compliance and Standards¶
10.1 Industry Standards¶
REQ-COMP-001: The system SHOULD align with industry observability standards: - OpenTelemetry for telemetry data (where applicable) - Prometheus exposition format for metrics (or equivalent standard) - Standard metric naming conventions (e.g., USE method, RED method) - Standard dashboard patterns and layouts
REQ-COMP-002: The system SHOULD follow observability best practices: - The Four Golden Signals (latency, traffic, errors, saturation) - The USE Method for resource monitoring (utilization, saturation, errors) - The RED Method for request monitoring (rate, errors, duration)
10.2 Privacy and Compliance¶
REQ-COMP-003: Metrics collection SHALL comply with privacy regulations: - GDPR compliance for EU deployments - No collection of personal data without consent - Data minimization principles applied - Right to erasure supported for metrics containing identifiers
REQ-COMP-004: Metrics retention SHALL follow data retention policies: - Configurable retention periods - Automatic deletion of expired metrics - Audit trail for metric access and deletion
11. Acceptance Criteria¶
11.1 Functional Acceptance¶
The Plugin Observability System SHALL be considered functionally complete when: 1. All SHALL requirements in Section 3 (Functional Requirements) are implemented 2. All metrics defined in Section 5 (Metrics Specification) are produced 3. All dashboards defined in Section 6 (Dashboard Specifications) are functional 4. All alert rules defined in Section 7 (Alert Rule Specifications) are operational 5. All testing requirements in Section 8 (Testing Requirements) pass successfully
11.2 Performance Acceptance¶
The Plugin Observability System SHALL meet performance acceptance when: 1. Metrics collection overhead is below 5ms per external API call 2. Metrics collection overhead is below 2ms per database operation 3. CPU utilization for metrics is below 1% under normal load 4. Memory footprint is below 100MB under normal load 5. Metrics endpoint responds within 5 seconds for standard scraping
11.3 Operational Acceptance¶
The Plugin Observability System SHALL meet operational acceptance when: 1. System operates continuously for 7 days without observability-related failures 2. Dashboards provide actionable insights for operations team 3. Alerts trigger appropriately with less than 5% false positive rate 4. Documentation is complete per Section 9 (Documentation Requirements) 5. Operators can successfully diagnose and resolve common issues using provided dashboards and documentation
12. Future Enhancements¶
The following enhancements MAY be considered for future versions:
12.1 Advanced Analytics¶
- Anomaly detection using machine learning for metric patterns
- Predictive alerting based on trend analysis
- Automatic baseline establishment for dynamic thresholds
- Correlation analysis between metrics across multiple plugins
12.2 Distributed Tracing¶
- End-to-end request tracing across plugin boundaries
- Trace correlation with metrics for detailed performance analysis
- Dependency graph visualization based on trace data
- Integration with distributed tracing systems
12.3 Enhanced Integration¶
- Automated dashboard generation based on plugin metadata
- Dynamic alert rule creation based on observed patterns
- Integration with incident management systems
- Integration with capacity planning tools
12.4 Advanced Visualization¶
- Real-time topology maps showing plugin dependencies
- Interactive performance flame graphs
- Custom dashboard builder with drag-and-drop interface
- Mobile-optimized dashboard views
Document Version: 1.0 Status: Approved for Implementation Last Updated: 2025-11-23 Authors: TQPro Observability Standards Committee Applicable To: All TQPro ecosystem plugins with external API and database integration