Instrumented Spring Petclinic 5.3.22 with Kieker 1.15

This repository contains the Spring Petclinic 5.3.22 application instrumented with Kieker 1.15 for performance monitoring and trace analysis.

📥 Downloading the Original Project

The original Spring Petclinic 5.3.22 project was downloaded from:

• GitHub Repository: Spring Framework Petclinic
• Release Version: 5.3.22

The original pom.xml was modified to integrate Kieker 1.15 for performance monitoring. Since the project primarily utilized jetty-web.xml for servlet configuration and did not include a web.xml, a custom web.xml file was introduced in WEB-INF/ to facilitate Kieker instrumentation.

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Initial Build and Compatibility Adjustments

Before integrating Kieker, the project was built and tested in its original form to ensure compatibility.

Issue: Jacoco Version Compatibility

• The existing Jacoco Maven Plugin version was outdated and incompatible with the project’s build.
• Resolution: The Jacoco Maven Plugin was updated in pom.xml as follows:

  <jacoco-maven-plugin>0.8.12</jacoco-maven-plugin>

• After this the project builds and compiles successfully with both java 11, java 17

🛠 Instrumentation Process

Instrumentation of Spring Petclinic 5.3.22 with Kieker 1.15

Reference Guide Followed:
The instrumentation was implemented based on the official Kieker documentation:
🔗 How to Perform Trace Analysis - Kieker Monitoring.

To enable trace analysis using Kieker, the following modifications were made:

• Added web.xml with the integrated interceptor

• Added Kieker 1.15 Dependency in pom The pom.xml file was modified to include:

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.kieker-monitoring</groupId>
    <artifactId>kieker</artifactId>
    <version>1.15</version>
</dependency>

• Spring Petclinic already included AspectJ version 1.9.7; therefore, no additional dependency was required

• the AspectJ Maven Plugin (version 1.15) was integrated to enable instrumentation in the build section

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.15</version>
    <configuration>
        <source>1.8</source>
        <target>1.8</target>
        <complianceLevel>1.8</complianceLevel>
        <aspectLibraries>
            <aspectLibrary>
                <groupId>net.kieker-monitoring</groupId>
                <artifactId>kieker</artifactId>
            </aspectLibrary>
        </aspectLibraries>
        <xmlConfigured>${basedir}/src/main/resources/aop.xml</xmlConfigured>
        <sources>
            <source>
                <basedir>${basedir}/src/main/java</basedir>
                <includes>
                    <include>**/**.java</include>
                </includes>
            </source>
        </sources>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>compile</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

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Adding custom Test Case tag before each Kieker trace

📌 Trace Tagging for Business Capability-Level Filtering To enable trace filtering per business capability or test case, a custom servlet filter named TestTagLoggingFilter was introduced. This allows Kieker to capture a unique tag before the execution trace starts.

🧩 Custom Filter Implementation A new class TestTagLoggingFilter implements javax.servlet.Filter and captures headers such as X-Test-Tag or testTag. The class is present in the /src/main/java/org/springframework/samples/petclinic/TestTagLoggingFilter.java directory.

⚙️ web.xml Filter Configuration To apply the filter in the correct order (before the Kieker session/trace filter), the following entries were added to WEB-INF/web.xml

<filter>
    <filter-name>TestTagLoggingFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.samples.petclinic.TestTagLoggingFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>TestTagLoggingFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

<filter>
    <filter-name>sessionAndTraceRegistrationFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>kieker.monitoring.probe.servlet.SessionAndTraceRegistrationFilter</filter-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>logFilterExecution</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>sessionAndTraceRegistrationFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

🧪 Using in Test Automation (e.g., Katalon Recorder) In Katalon Recorder or similar tools, use a runScript command with the following Target before each test case (put 'response' in the value):

xhr.open("GET", "http://localhost:8080/owners/", false); 
xhr.setRequestHeader("X-Test-Tag", "Test_BusinessCapabilityName_TestCaseName"); 
xhr.send(null); 
return xhr.responseText;

This injects a unique tag, recorded as a separate Kieker record, to separate trace segments per test case.

Note for future reference

• Older spring framework version (PetClinic 5.3.22 that uses javax servlet) needed to use to instrument with Kieker since Kieker doesn't support jakarta servlet Kieker Issue
• Kieker 2.0.2 didn't capture useful traces in Petclinic 5.3.22 → Switched to Kieker 1.15.
• Kieker 1.15 worked for monitoring but failed with Java 17 when converting traces (converting the .dat file to .dot)
• Java 11 was required for trace analysis (.dat → .dot → .pdf conversion).
• Switched between Java 17 and Java 11, depending on the task.