Module
Module 6 of 6Lesson 2 of 3~15 min

Drawing a request's journey through your product

Lesson 2 of the module "Diagnose and map your product" in the course "Explain how a web product works, from browser to server".

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Lesson objective

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to produce the annotated diagram of a request's journey through your own product (eight zones, five annotations per zone) and have it validated by a developer.

Where it fits

Diagnose and map your product

How do I use all of this to qualify an incident and describe my own product?

Lessons in this module

  1. Qualifying an incident layer by layer
  2. Drawing a request's journey through your product (this lesson)
  3. Exit kit and application plan

What you will learn in the course

This lesson is part of the course Explain how a web product works, from browser to server

  • Describe the steps of a web request, from the typed address to the displayed page (URL, DNS resolution, encrypted connection, HTTP request and response, browser rendering).
  • Read an HTTP exchange in the browser's Network tab (method, URL, status code, headers, cookies, duration) and draw a first diagnosis from it.
  • Explain how responsibilities are split between browser, frontend, backend, API, database and third-party services, and place where a business rule must run.
  • Explain the role of a CDN and of caches (browser, CDN, server) and anticipate their effects on speed, data freshness and releases.
  • Tell apart local, preview, staging and production environments, and say what changes from one to another (configuration, data, secrets).
  • Place a symptom (slowness, blank page, error, stale data) in the right layer and ask the technical team precise questions.
  • Produce the annotated diagram of a request's journey through your own product and have it validated by a developer.

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