Java agent release notesRSS

New features and improvements

• Added support for Webflux 6 1181

• Added support for Spring JMS 6 1088

• Added support for Mongodb Reactive Streams 1164

• Added support for Kafka Streams 1170

  Support for Kafka Streams comes in two flavors, metrics and spans. Metrics are enabled by default, while spans are disabled by default. To enable spans add the following to your newrelic.yml configuration under the common section:

common:
  class_transformer:
    kafka-streams-spans:
      enabled: true

• Error fingerprint - supply your own errors inbox group names 1195

  Are your error occurrences grouped poorly? Set your own error fingerprint via a callback function. A new public API method has been added that will accept a user defined proc. The proc will be invoked for each noticed error and whenever it returns a string, that string will be used as the error group name for the error and will take precedence over any server-side grouping that takes place with the New Relic errors inbox. This gives users much greater control over the grouping of their errors. For more information check our API: Error Grouping and APM: Group errors tab pages.

• User tracking - associate errors with a user id 1188

  You can now see the number of users impacted by an error group. Identify the end user with a new public API method that will accept a string representation of a user id and associate that user id with the current transaction. Transactions and errors will then have a new enduser.id agent attribute associated with them. This will allow agent users to tag transactions and errors as belonging to given user ids in support of greater filtering and alerting capabilities. For more information check the [Newrelic.setUserId ](https://newrelic.github.io/java-agent-api/javadoc/com/newrelic/api/agent/NewRelic.html#setUserName(java.lang.String) documentation and the Track users impacted with errors inbox page.

• Invoking token.link() outside a transaction will instrument that method to start an async transaction 1140

• The Kafka clients instrumentation has new metrics to list the nodes: MessageBroker/Kafka/Nodes/<node> 1130

Fixes

• Fix ClassCircularityError when agent attaches 1137
• Fix NullPointerException thrown when calling addCustomAttributes 1115
• Make sure TokenAndRefCount.token is never null 1149
• Using a time based cache to store database connection data to prevent a memory leak when instrumenting MySQL client with replication 1114
• Decreased the number of threads used in the HttpUrlConnection instrumentation 1145
• Fix an issue when HttpUrlConnection is used with the legacy cross application tracing 1142
• Performance improvement in Netty’s RequestWrapper 1163
• Gracefully shutdown the agent if it encounters issues on startup 1136
• Fix WeavedMethod and InstrumentedMethod annotations when applied to constructors. 1153
• Performance improvements when using Tomcat 1131
• Fixed a bug that caused the agent to not report some exceptions 1176
• Updated DockerData to increase the number of container IDs detected 1178
• Reduce the number of threads used in Kafka clients instrumentation 1056
• Grammar changes [1175](https://github.com/newrelic/newrelic-java-agent/pull/1175 and [1190][https://github.com/newrelic/newrelic-java-agent/pull/1190](https://github.com/newrelic/newrelic-java-agent/pull/1190))

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.10.0 and 7.11.0, the results printed to the console will be like:

➜ diff newrelic_7.10.0.yml newrelic_7.11.0.yml
...
107a108,119
>       # Whether the log events should include context from loggers with support for that.
>       include_context_data:
>
>         # When true, application logs will contain context data.
>         enabled: false
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should be sent to New Relic.
>         #include:
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should not be sent to New Relic.
>         #exclude:
>
125a138
>
128c141
<     enabled: false
---
>     enabled: true
...

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.11.0. If you are moving to 7.11.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

New features and improvements

Fixes

• Various fixes to the HttpUrlConnection instrumentation. See the README for full details 1145.
• Ensure that TokenAndRefCount.token is never null 1148.
• Correct a possible NullPointerException being thrown when calling addCustomAttributes 1141.
• Fix ClassCircularityError when agent attaches 1139.

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.10.0 and 7.11.0, the results printed to the console will be like:

➜ diff newrelic_7.10.0.yml newrelic_7.11.0.yml
...
107a108,119
>       # Whether the log events should include context from loggers with support for that.
>       include_context_data:
>
>         # When true, application logs will contain context data.
>         enabled: false
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should be sent to New Relic.
>         #include:
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should not be sent to New Relic.
>         #exclude:
>
125a138
>
128c141
<     enabled: false
---
>     enabled: true
...

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.11.0. If you are moving to 7.11.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

New features and improvements

• Added support for Slick 3.4.0 on Scala 2.13
• Added support for Embedded Tomcat JMX
• Updated the Java agent's snakeyaml dependency to 1.33
• Added tracer debug logging, which will appear when -Dnewrelic.config.log_level=finest and -Dnewrelic.debug=true are set
• Improved logging when using the recordCustomEvent API now includes event type, key and value
• Added Log4j1 instrumentation to support auto log forwarding
• Added JBoss Logging instrumentation to support auto log forwarding
• Real-time profiling for Java using JFR metrics can now be dynamically enabled/disabled via agent configuration

Fixes

• Removed leading slash in JCache metric names
• Fixed a bug that was preventing Log4j2 metrics from getting disabled properly
• Added a missing delimiter in POSTGRES_DIALECT_PATTERN
• Fixed a ClassCastException in GraphQL 16/17
• Refactored HttpURLConnection instrumentation to fix several bugs that were affecting external calls and distributed traces
• Refactored grpc-1.40.0 instrumentation to ensure that tokens were properly being linked across threads
• Fixed a bug that was causing transactions to fail to link when the Spring Webclient would timeout and emit a ReadTimeoutException

Removals

The following previously deprecated instrumentation modules were removed:

• cassandra-datastax-2.1.2
• httpclient-3.0
• jdbc-embedded-derby-10.2.1.6
• jdbc-embedded-derby-10.10.1.1
• jetty-7
• jetty-7.6
• jetty-9
• jetty-9.0.4
• jetty-9.1
• mongodb-2.12
• mongodb-2.14
• mongodb-3.0
• okhttp-3.0.0
• okhttp-3.4.0
• okhttp-3.5.0

The previously deprecated httpResponseCode, response.status, and response.statusMessage transaction/span attributes were removed. These have been replaced by http.statusCode and http.statusText. If you've any custom dashboards or alerts that query the httpResponseCode, response.status, and response.statusMessage attributes then they will need to be updated to instead use http.statusCode and http.statusText.

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.10.0 and 7.11.0, the results printed to the console will be like:

➜ diff newrelic_7.10.0.yml newrelic_7.11.0.yml
...
107a108,119
>       # Whether the log events should include context from loggers with support for that.
>       include_context_data:
>
>         # When true, application logs will contain context data.
>         enabled: false
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should be sent to New Relic.
>         #include:
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should not be sent to New Relic.
>         #exclude:
>
125a138
>
128c141
<     enabled: false
---
>     enabled: true
...

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.11.0. If you're moving to 7.11.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

New features and improvements

Fixes

• Fix bug with log4j2 metrics 1068
• Adds a previously missing delimiter in POSTGRES_DIALECT_PATTERN "|" 1050
• Update snakeyaml lib to v1.33 security patch 1077

Deprecation notice

The following instrumentation modules have been deprecated for removal:

• cassandra-datastax-2.1.2
• httpclient-3.0
• jdbc-embedded-derby-10.10.1.1
• jetty-7
• jetty-7.6
• jetty-9
• jetty-9.0.4
• jetty-9.1
• mongodb-2.12
• mongodb-2.14
• mongodb-3.0
• okhttp-3.0.0
• okhttp-3.4.0
• okhttp-3.5.0

The httpResponseCode, response.status and response.statusMessage transaction/span attributes are deprecated and will be removed in a future release. These have been replaced by http.statusCode and http.statusText.

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.10.0 and 7.11.0, the results printed to the console will be like:

➜ diff newrelic_7.10.0.yml newrelic_7.11.0.yml
...
107a108,119
>       # Whether the log events should include context from loggers with support for that.
>       include_context_data:
>
>         # When true, application logs will contain context data.
>         enabled: false
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should be sent to New Relic.
>         #include:
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should not be sent to New Relic.
>         #exclude:
>
125a138
>
128c141
<     enabled: false
---
>     enabled: true
...

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.11.0. If you are moving to 7.11.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

New features and improvements

• Support Java 19 1022

• Support Play 2.8.16+ 981

• Support ojdbc8 v21.1.0.0+ 1042

• Support Semeru/OpenJ9 JVMs 993

• Support log forwarding for java.util.logging (JUL) 1049

• Support forwarding log context data 866

  The agent can now forward data in Mapped Diagnostic Context (MDC, logback/slf4j) and ThreadContext (log4j2) as attributes when forwarding log records. When the feature is enabled, these attributes will be added to the log records with a context. prefix. For details on how to enable this feature see the documentation for context_data.

• Custom Event Limit Increase 1036

  This version increases the default limit of custom events from 10,000 events per minute to 30,000 events per minute. In the scenario that custom events were being limited, this change will allow more custom events to be sent to New Relic. There is also a new configurable maximum limit of 100,000 events per minute. To change the limits, see the documentation for max_samples_stored. To learn more about the change and how to determine if custom events are being dropped, see our Explorers Hub post.

• Code-level metrics on by default 1037

  The code-level metrics functionality introduced with agent 7.10 is now enabled by default. This feature will cause an increase in the consumption of data. The amount depends on the application. To disable code-level metrics, see instructions on our code-level metrics documentation.

Fixes

• Prevent an exception from being thrown in the Jedis instrumentation 1011
• Improvement on Http4s transactions 1006
• Fix noticeError API not verifying whether errors were expected 1014
• Adds command for Lettuce queries to clusters 1031
• Fix exception when building up the agent jar from a clean repo 1048
• Better error handling for code-level metrics 1021 1051
• Fix HttpUrlConnection spans not terminating on exception 1053

Deprecation notice

The following instrumentation modules are being deprecated for removal:

• cassandra-datastax-2.1.2
• httpclient-3.0
• jdbc-embedded-derby-10.10.1.1
• jetty-7
• jetty-7.6
• jetty-9
• jetty-9.0.4
• jetty-9.1
• mongodb-2.12
• mongodb-2.14
• mongodb-3.0
• okhttp-3.0.0
• okhttp-3.4.0
• okhttp-3.5.0

The httpResponseCode, response.status and response.statusMessage transaction/span attributes are deprecated and will be removed in a future release. These have been replaced by http.statusCode and http.statusText.

Support statement

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.10.0 and 7.11.0, the results printed to the console will be like:

➜ diff newrelic_7.10.0.yml newrelic_7.11.0.yml
...
107a108,119
>       # Whether the log events should include context from loggers with support for that.
>       include_context_data:
>
>         # When true, application logs will contain context data.
>         enabled: false
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should be sent to New Relic.
>         #include:
>
>         # A comma separated list of attribute keys whose values should not be sent to New Relic.
>         #exclude:
>
125a138
>
128c141
<     enabled: false
---
>     enabled: true
...

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.11.0. If you are moving to 7.11.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

New features and improvements

Added the following Jakarta EE 9/9.1 compatible instrumentation:

• Jetty 11
• Tomcat 10
• Enterprise Java Beans 4.0
• Jakarta RS/WS
• Jersey 3+
• Jersey Client 3
• JSP 3
• Servlet 5 & 6
• Jakarata.xml
• JMS 3
• Glassfish 6.0
• Open Liberty 21.0.0.12+

Code level metrics

For traced methods in automatic instrumentation or from @Trace annotations, the agent is now capable of reporting metrics with method-level granularity. When the new functionality is enabled, the agent will associate source-code-related metadata with some metrics. Then, when the corresponding Java class file that defines the methods is loaded up in a New Relic CodeStream-powered IDE, the four golden signals for each method will be presented to the developer directly.

Agent log forwarding now adds the following attributes to log events for the log4j2 and logback1.2 frameworks:

• thread.name
• thread.id
• logger.name
• logger.fqcn
• error.class
• error.stack
• error.message

Fixes

Fixed an issue with distributed tracing headers not being added on external requests made with the HttpUrlConnection client

Support statement

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Full changelog: https://github.com/newrelic/newrelic-java-agent/compare/v7.9.0...v7.10.0

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.7.0 and 7.8.0, the results printed to the console will be:

➜ diff newrelic_7.7.0.yml newrelic_7.8.0.yml
98c98
<     #forwarding:
---
>     forwarding:
100,101c100,101
<       # When true, application logs will be forwarded to New Relic. The default is false.
<       #enabled: false
---
>       # When true, application logs will be forwarded to New Relic. The default is true.
>       enabled: true

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.8.0. If you are moving to 7.8.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

New features and improvements

• Where applicable, existing instrumentation has been tested and verified as compatible with Jakarta EE 8. 900
• Add new instrumentation to support Jetty 10. 936
• Update to jfr-daemon 1.9.0 to address CVE-2020-29582 and improve CPU overhead. 937
• Add support to pass a boolean environment variable NEWRELIC_DEBUG where setting it to true activates the debug configuration. 890
• Improved performance by internally replacing regex replace with iterative char replace (thanks to @zowens for this contribution) 933

Fixes

• Update the httpurlconnection instrumentation to use newer distributed tracing APIs so that spans are correctly marked as external calls in distributed traces and contain the expected http.* attributes. 885
• Illegal Access Exception is no longer thrown from apps using NR agent with scala 2.12 and Java 11. 876

Support statement

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Update to latest version

To identify which version of the Java agent you're currently using, run java -jar newrelic.jar -v. Your Java agent version will be printed to your console.

Then, to update to the latest Java agent version:

1. Back up the entire Java agent root directory to another location. Rename that directory to NewRelic_Agent#.#.#, where #.#.# is the agent version number.
2. Download the agent.
3. Unzip the new agent download file, then copy newrelic-api.jar and newrelic.jar into the original Java agent root directory.
4. Compare your old newrelic.yml with the newly downloaded newrelic.yml from the zip, and update the file if needed.
5. Restart your Java dispatcher.

If you experience issues after the Java agent update, restore from the backed-up New Relic agent directory.

Update agent config differences

We add new settings to newrelic.yml as we release new versions of the agent. You can use diff or another diffing utility to see what's changed, and add the new config settings to your old file. Make sure not to overwrite any customizations you've made to the file, such as your license key, app name, or changes to default settings.

For example, if you diff the default newrelic.yml files for Java agent versions 7.7.0 and 7.8.0, the results printed to the console will be:

➜ diff newrelic_7.7.0.yml newrelic_7.8.0.yml
98c98
<     #forwarding:
---
>     forwarding:
100,101c100,101
<       # When true, application logs will be forwarded to New Relic. The default is false.
<       #enabled: false
---
>       # When true, application logs will be forwarded to New Relic. The default is true.
>       enabled: true

In this example, these lines were added to the default newrelic.yml in Java agent version 7.8.0. If you are moving to 7.8.0 or higher, you should add these new lines to your original newrelic.yml.

New features and improvements

• Updated the agent to use caffeine 2.9.3 832
• Refactored the log.level attribute name on LogEvents to instead be level 858
• Kafka instrumentation - supports metrics for kafka-clients versions 3.x. 860 and 865
• Update to jfr-daemon 1.8.0 869
• Lettuce instrumentation - supports lettuce-core 4.3 up to 6.x. Please remove any other (experimental/incubating) lettuce extensions or else Redis database metrics could be doubled. 872

Fixes

• Fixed CQLParser getOperationAndTableName exception handling. Exceptions are now handled within the CQLParser. 857
• Removed akka-http-core bindAndHandle instrumentation to resolve scenarios where duplicated transactions could result 850 (see Scala Akka HTTP core instrumentation for more details)

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

New features and improvements

• Supports Java 18 813
• APM logs in context. Automatic application log forwarding is now enabled by default. This version of the agent will automatically send enriched application logs to New Relic. To learn more about this feature see Java: Configure logs in context, and additional configuration options are available Java agent configuration: Config file. To learn about how to toggle log ingestion on or off by account see Disable automatic logging 817
• Added instrumentation support for the Postgres, MySQL, Oracle & MSSQL R2DBC connectors 810, 816, 829, and 828

Fixes

• Patches a security issue related to an older version of jszip that is included in the Java agent API Javadoc jar 820

Support statement:

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.