[role="xpack"]
[[apm-getting-started]]
== Get started with the APM app

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<titleabbrev>Get started</titleabbrev>
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Elastic APM captures different types of information from within instrumented applications:

* *Spans* contain information about the execution of a specific code path.
They measure from the start to end of an activity,
and they can have a parent/child relationship with other spans.
* *Transactions* are a special kind of span;
they are the first span for a particular service and have extra metadata associated with them.
As an example, a transaction could be a request to your server, a batch job, or a custom transaction type.
*Traces* link together related transactions to show an end-to-end performance of how a request was served and which services were part of it.
* *Errors* contain information about the original exception that occurred or about a log created when the exception occurred.

Curated charts and tables display the different types of APM data, which allows you to compare and debug your applications easily.

* <<services>>
* <<traces>>
* <<transactions>>
* <<spans>>
* <<errors>>
* <<metrics>>
* <<service-maps>>

TIP: Want to learn more about the Elastic APM ecosystem?
See the {apm-get-started-ref}/overview.html[APM Overview].

include::services.asciidoc[]

include::traces.asciidoc[]

include::transactions.asciidoc[]

include::spans.asciidoc[]

include::errors.asciidoc[]

include::metrics.asciidoc[]

include::service-maps.asciidoc[]