Podcast Summary
DocuSign developer platform, mobile observability: The DocuSign developer platform simplifies managing agreements with flexible APIs and tools, while mobile observability is crucial for monitoring mobile application performance in the real world, offering less control than backend observability
Managing agreements can be complex with disparate data and manual processes. However, the DocuSign developer platform offers a solution with flexible APIs and tools to streamline agreements, customize workflows, extend capabilities, and extract valuable AI-driven insights. Switching gears, in the world of software and technology, we had an enlightening conversation with Austin Edmonds, an iOS developer at embrace.io, about mobile observability. Austin shared his origin story, which began with a passion for math and video games, leading him to a career in computer science. He discovered iOS development during college and has been hooked ever since. Mobile observability differs from backend observability as mobile devices offer less control. Developers cannot dictate disk space, network conditions, or battery life. The display can also be a factor, as it may be damaged or inactive. Despite these challenges, monitoring mobile applications' performance in the wild is crucial to ensure the logic is correct and edge cases are minimized.
Mobile network requests observability: Optimizing mobile network requests is crucial for quick user experience and gathering valuable telemetry data. Minimize impact on runtime and avoid crashes or slowness.
As a mobile application developer, you need to be prepared for the vast range of devices and operating systems your users may be using. This variability can impact the performance and user experience of your app. A key area to focus on is observing and optimizing network requests, as these interactions are crucial for a quick and successful user experience. Network requests are also where you can gather valuable telemetry data. However, as an observability vendor, it's essential to minimize the impact on the runtime of the application and avoid causing crashes or slowness. Additionally, crash reports provide valuable data that can be retrieved once the app is relaunched. Overall, understanding and addressing the unique challenges of mobile observability can lead to improved user experience and better application performance.
Mobile observability privacy concerns: Mobile observability is crucial for identifying mobile app issues but comes with privacy challenges. Developers should avoid capturing sensitive info and instead calculate derivatives on the device.
Mobile observability, while crucial for identifying and resolving issues in mobile applications, comes with unique challenges, particularly regarding privacy concerns. Explicit failures, such as an operating system killing an app, can be difficult to diagnose, and random failures require robust logic to recover and capture necessary data. Privacy is a major concern in the mobile space, with operating systems limiting what data can be accessed by applications or observability vendors. Information like disk space availability, location, and even IP addresses can be used to identify users and track their activity across apps. Developers should avoid capturing sensitive information and instead calculate derivatives on the device. Mobile observability has been a long-standing practice, but awareness and maturity in this area have grown significantly in recent years, with a greater emphasis on privacy protection and secure data handling.
OpenTelemetry adoption in mobile observability: The adoption of OpenTelemetry in mobile observability is growing due to its ability to allow data to be sent to any backend, reducing vendor lock-in and increasing industry cooperation.
The observability space in the tech industry is maturing, and there's a shift towards open standards like OpenTelemetry. Vendors like Sentry, Datadog, and New Relic have been offering mobile observability solutions for some time now, but the last year has seen significant growth in the adoption of OpenTelemetry. This open standard allows data to be sent to any backend, making things easier for companies and reducing vendor lock-in. The OpenTelemetry community is actively discussing and developing semantic conventions for mobile-specific interactions. Although some larger players may have initially resisted open standards due to potential business implications, the trend is towards embracing them to offer better experiences and cooperation within the industry. Companies are moving towards implementing open standards at a technical level, allowing each framework to depend on the OpenTelemetry API rather than being heavily reliant on a single vendor. This shift towards open standards is in response to customer demand for more flexibility and less commitment to a single vendor.
Mobile observability and open telemetry: Implementing open telemetry standards for mobile observability can make first-party SDK teams more willing to adopt observability projects and streamline the implementation process.
Implementing open telemetry standards for mobile observability can significantly benefit the entire ecosystem by making first-party SDK teams more willing to adopt observability projects. Although modeling telemetry from mobile devices to open telemetry standards presented challenges, the abstract and simple nature of open telemetry made it easier to map existing concepts to the new primitives. The key was ensuring that everyone in the organization understood the new vocabulary and that all features were congruent with the new data model. Embracing semantic conventions from both the server and client sides helped streamline the implementation process, and the goal was to eventually propose these conventions to relevant SIGs for potential inclusion in the open telemetry standards. Despite the challenges, the future of mobile observability looks promising, with potential for more observability built into mobile operating systems and more comprehensive instrumentation for vendor third-party SDKs.
Mobile observability and OpenTelemetry: The future of mobile observability is in OpenTelemetry, the adoption of which will enable better understanding and tracing of application events through a common API, providing a more comprehensive view of the user experience by mingling data from the frontend and backend.
The future of mobile observability lies in the adoption of open standards like OpenTelemetry. Many application developers are looking forward to vendors instrumenting their SDKs with this common API, allowing for better understanding and tracing of application events. This data can then live alongside data collected on the backend, providing a more comprehensive view of the user experience. OpenTelemetry's ability to mingle data from the frontend and backend is a significant benefit, enabling a more complete understanding of user interactions and request handling. Additionally, individuals who actively contribute to the Stack Overflow community by answering and editing questions can be recognized with badges, such as the Illuminator badge, for their efforts in spreading knowledge.