Paraya 6 JAX-RS invalid transaction name + no span captured with @Trace

[SylvainJuge]

This was initially reported in our forum:

https://discuss.elastic.co/t/problem-with-distributing-tracing-for-jakarta-10-and-payara-6/372920/6

With the provided test application in https://github.com/ciment7/jakarta-test we can reproduce the following symptoms:

• the first execution of the jax-rs resource is properly named (1)
• the second and following executions of jax-rs are named from the servlet transaction (2)
• no extra span is being captured for the method annotated with @Traced (3)

For 1) and 2), the issue seems to happen because in the first case the servlet transaction wraps the jax-rs resource execution, and in the second case the jax-rs invocation is made without parent servlet transaction, which is something that we don't support as described in #1752 issue.

For 3) this is probably a related issue but I have not found any hint of what could be wrong here.

[ciment7]

I see problem also for async JAX-RS request/response. please, check this also. Thanks

[SylvainJuge]

In the forum discussion we had a while ago about this I attempted to use opentelemetry agent as a potential workaround, which also had a few issues.

Did you checked with a more recent version of Payara to see if its' still happening ?
We are currently investing quite a lot in OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation agents with EDOT Java, so if there is a fix for that it would likely be on the EDOT/OpenTelemetry side.

[ciment7]

Hi @SylvainJuge ,

I have already prepared jakarta test repository with EDOT agent (1.4.1) and with latest Payara 6.2025.5

https://github.com/ciment7/jakarta-test/tree/feature/edot

I see in Kibana 2 different transaction names instead of one:

• GET /jakarta-test/api/*
• GET /jakarta-test/api/hello-world

My expectation was to see only GET /jakarta-test/api/hello-world

In detail of request I expected custom span with name HelloService.traceHelloMethod, but there is no custom span due to annotation @SpanWith. This span was captured under different trace id, with transaction.type=unknown

When I take trace.id which was added to response header X-Trace-Id, in Kibana I see transaction with name: GET /jakarta-test/api/*

What is your advice? Thanks in advance.

[ciment7]

I found that Payara 6.2022.2 is the latest version in which tracing of JAX-RS endpoints works correctly. Payara 6.2022.3 cannot handle JAX-RS transactions correctly.

What changed between 6.2022.2 and 6.2022.3?

MicroProfile was upgraded (5.0 → 6.0).
Built-in OpenTelemetry (MicroProfile Telemetry) is now enabled by default—so the out-of-the-box server already auto-configures OpenTelemetry instrumentation for JAX-RS, CDI, etc.
This means that Payara’s own OTel instrumentation may take precedence over the Elastic APM agent’s byte-code transformations. After the very first request (which still starts as a servlet transaction), the APM agent no longer sees the JAX-RS resource invocation and falls back to naming everything ServletContainer#doGet.

@SylvainJuge , maybe this investigation will help fix the bug. What’s your opinion?