Maple field manual
Operate from evidence.
Plain-English foundations and hands-on investigations for engineers running production software. Start with APM, then go deeper into observability, OpenTelemetry, and the signals behind a useful answer.
02 · Foundations
Build the mental model
Read in any order. Each guide answers one durable question without assuming a vendor or stack.
What is observability?
Understand traces, logs, and metrics, and why correlation matters more than collecting each signal in isolation.
What is OpenTelemetry?
Learn how vendor-neutral instrumentation keeps telemetry portable across languages, collectors, and backends.
Best open-source observability tools
Compare the leading open-source options by architecture, signals, license, operating cost, and best fit.
What is Apdex?
Read the score that turns response times into one satisfaction number, choose the target T behind it, and know when it beats a p95 alert.
Uptime monitoring with traces and HTTP checks
Alert on error rate, throughput and Apdex from the traces you already send, add Collector HTTP checks for endpoints and certificates, and see which failures each one catches.