March 2017 Summaries

New Relic's mobile agents now provide detailed information on HTTP errors and network failures in mobile apps, allowing developers to gain visibility into critical issues and improve their user experience. The new MobileRequestError event type provides unaggregated, dimensional data stored in a lossless manner and preindexed across all dimensions, enabling teams to quickly identify problems, prioritize fixes, and collaborate more effectively. This new data is available to users of the enterprise edition of New Relic Mobile and can be used with NRQL querying, alerting, and charting power to optimize mobile performance and business dashboards.

New Relic has introduced a new feature called MobileRequestError, which provides detailed data on every HTTP request error or network failure in mobile apps. This feature enhances the ability of frontend and backend teams to improve user experience by offering real-time visibility into the app's entire stack, enabling quicker incident response and collaboration between teams. The MobileRequestError data, available to enterprise edition users, is stored in a preindexed, unaggregated format and can be utilized with New Relic's Digital Intelligence Platform tools such as New Relic Alerts and Insights for querying, alerting, and creating detailed visualizations. This advancement helps teams to diagnose issues, reduce user frustration, and maintain high app performance by allowing precise alerts and facilitating the identification of problematic backend services. The feature underscores the importance of comprehensive data beyond crash reporting to manage the complex ecosystems that modern mobile apps depend on, ultimately contributing to user retention by addressing the causes of poor user experiences effectively.

Ireland has emerged as a key player in the 21st century global economy, with Dublin becoming one of the most important hubs of technology innovation in Europe. The country's tech sector isn't new, but it has grown significantly since the 1950s with multinational companies like IBM and Ericsson setting up presence. Today, Ireland is attractive to big companies due to availability of talent, which is considered the currency of the moment. The biggest names in tech, such as Google and Apple, have a significant presence in Dublin's Silicon Docks area, while there is also a thriving startup scene with many innovative companies being founded by people who worked for years in bigger tech firms. The community is known for its sense of camaraderie and collaboration, with high-profile events like hackathons that attract top talent. The influx of energy, talent, and investment is rapidly transforming the city, making it a world-class, multicultural European capital. Ireland is well-positioned to lead in artificial intelligence, with some of the world's leading AI academics and advanced research centers.

Ireland, particularly Dublin, has emerged as a significant hub for technology innovation, attracting major multinational companies and fostering a vibrant startup ecosystem. This transformation, bolstered by the presence of global tech giants like Google and Apple in the Silicon Docks area, is due in part to Ireland's rich talent pool and access to the European market, especially post-Brexit. The city, once primarily known for its cultural contributions, now thrives with tech-driven energy and investment, which has spurred a collaborative community hosting events like hackathons to attract top talent. Ken Finnegan of IDA Ireland highlights Ireland's potential to lead in emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, due to its advanced research centers and renowned academics in the field. This evolution has not only changed Dublin's landscape but also positioned Ireland as a key player in the global tech scene, attracting attention and investment from around the world.

New Relic Browser now has general availability of source map support for frontend JavaScript errors, making it easier to troubleshoot and fix issues by mapping original source code locations. This feature can be accessed through an intuitive drag-and-drop option or a robust API that integrates with build systems. Additionally, New Relic provides a command line tool and JavaScript API to automate the process of publishing source maps in build pipelines, allowing for seamless debugging and error analysis. By using source map support, developers can reduce client-side errors and improve the end user experience, while also gaining visibility into their application's performance and reliability.

Production JavaScript has evolved significantly, with practices like transpilation, bundling, and minification becoming standard, but these can obscure code and complicate error detection. New Relic Browser now offers source map support to address this issue, allowing developers to map JavaScript errors back to the original source code to streamline troubleshooting. This feature includes an intuitive drag-and-drop function within the New Relic Browser dashboard and a robust API for integrating source maps into build systems, enabling automated error mapping in production environments. By simplifying JavaScript error debugging, New Relic Browser aims to enhance the end-user experience by reducing client-side errors and providing developers with the tools needed for effective error resolution.

New Relic's Dynamic Baseline Alerts use predictive analytics to help customers define dynamic, rather than static, alert thresholds. To determine what works best, they defined "better" in the context of helping customers and used both human and machine scoring. They developed a Mean Absolute Scaled Error method with two tweaks: evaluating predictions against anomaly-dampened observations and putting a guardrail around predictable series to prevent overly large errors. This method allows for analysis of regression and classification error, including precision, recall, and F1 scores. The system also includes human evaluation to ensure the alerts are useful on real-world systems. Dynamic Baseline Alerts are currently in limited release and will be generally available later this year, offering a great option for alerting on metrics with cyclical patterns.

New Relic's development of Dynamic Baseline Alerts employs predictive analytics to set dynamic alert thresholds, offering an alternative to static thresholds by identifying significant deviations from normal behavior rather than precise predictions. The process involved defining "better" in terms of customer benefit, using both human and machine scoring, and settling on a Mean Absolute Scaled Error with specific adjustments to suit various data scales and anomaly detection. Additionally, the evaluation incorporated precision, recall, and F1 scores from machine learning to assess classification accuracy, alongside human evaluations to ensure practical applicability. These alerts, designed for metrics with cyclical patterns, aim to help users determine what constitutes normal behavior in their systems, with plans for broader availability and integration into New Relic's Digital Intelligence Platform.