[Docs] Breakdown Graphs requirements from the intake api perspective

[science695]

Can you add some documentations showing what needs to be sent in with an Intake api request so that the breakdown graphs function properly?

I am using a community APM client (php: http://github.com/philkra/elastic-apm-php-agent), and when it sends in APM, it doesn't send in metrics unless I intentionally create them.

I have spent several hours trying to figure out why these graphs work, and I'm still not sure I am 100% correct on what drives it.

Can you add a docs page describing what you need to do for those graphs to work without a APM client that handles it automagically for you?

Also, am I right that it requires the aggregations to be created by the agent? It seems surprising that with all the powerful aggregations elastic does that it is necessary to ingest aggregated data and store it.

Thanks for any explanation of how this process works!

[science695]

It looks like this was slightly mentioned in: #91, but the PR just focused on the asynchronous aspect, and not the data source requirements for these to display.

And if I am completely off, if you could explain what is the right procedure.

Currently the code I'm using generates these documents:

{"metadata"...}
{"span"...}
{"span"...}
...
{"transaction"..}

While a test I ran with the nodejs apm also created a metric for cpu/mem usage, and metrics for the different spans / types.

[felixbarny]

See https://github.com/elastic/apm/blob/master/docs/agent-development.md#Transaction-and-span-breakdown for all the glory details

[science695]

Thanks!