Another of the data samples we loaded in Chapter 1, Play Time - Getting Data In, contained application logs from our application server. These have a Splunk source type of log4j and detail the various calls that our application makes to the backend database in response to user web requests, in addition to providing insight into memory utilization and other health-related information. We are particularly interested in tracking how our application is performing in relation to the time taken to process user-driven requests for information.
In this recipe, we will write a Splunk search to find out how our application is performing. To do this, we will analyze database call transactions and chart the maximum, mean, and minimum transaction durations over the past week.