A paradigm shift is overdue in the realm of software observability. While Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) have been having fun with metrics, traces, and logs, software developers have been left in the lurch, shackled to the conventional, low-fidelity tool of logs. Why should SREs have all the fun, right? Welcome to the dawn of a new era. An era where developers, too, can enjoy superior observability engineering. That’s where the fourth pillar of observability comes in: Snapshots.

Logging is ancient history. You know – old and outdated. At one time, it was the best method – like sending carrier pigeons to convey messages – but we live in an ever-changing world. Long gone are the days in which logging was the primary method when troubleshooting and debugging. Any developer who was written millions of log lines can attest to the fact that they’ve probably needed to access maybe 1% of those.

Cloud logging services have long been plagued by limitations and high costs, hindering companies’ ability to achieve true flexibility in their operations. One of the primary obstacles is the lack of flexibility in traditional cloud logging services, which often require companies to make upfront decisions about log levels and storage capacity, locking them into fixed plans for extended periods.

Debugging APIs can be a challenge for any developer dealing with REST APIs. Trying to create an exact API request, especially for highly complex requests with large bodies and multiple headers, is essential but also tough to do. By using a tool like Postman to create a request for debugging and API testing purposes, you can easily replay an API request with the exact configuration of the original request.

As digital transformation and the consequent move towards cloud-native continues to accelerate, and customer demands increase, traditional approaches to debugging and troubleshooting are limited and insufficient. Developers must quickly understand the relationships between user sessions, topology, and end-to-end transactions during incidents.

Logs are the core of the human-machine interface for software developers and operators. Historically, they are very much like caveman paintings. They were our first attempt to express and understand how our software was working. For several decades, logs were an island of calm in a rapidly changing technological ecosystem. Logs remained the same even as software services became web-based and grew in scale.

Real Device Cloud error and crash reporting can help you find the root cause of errors faster and inspire greater confidence in your mobile app’s performance.