skywalking-java/docs/en/guides/inventory-extension.md

Backend Inventory Entity Extension

SkyWalking includes four inventory entities.

• Service Inventory
• Service Instance Inventory
• Endpoint Inventory
• Network Address Inventory

All metric, topology, trace and alarm are related to these entity IDs.

For understanding the Service, Service Instance and Endpoint concepts, please read Project Overview.

For Network Address Inventory, it represents all network address, in IP:port, hostname, domain name formats, which are detected by language agents or other probes.

Extension

Right now, only Service Inventory extension is already supported in backend core. Service provides field properties in Json format, which is usually used for specific service rather than normal business services, such as Database, Cache, MQ, etc.

For keeping code consistent and friendly in query and visualization, the Json properties need to follow the rules.

Database

1. NodeType == Database(1)
2. Json properties include following keys.

• database. Database name, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL
• db.type. Database type, such as sql db, redis db.
• db.instance. Database instance name.