Meters

Micrometer supports a set of Meter primitives, including Timer, Counter, Gauge, DistributionSummary, LongTaskTimer, FunctionCounter, FunctionTimer, and TimeGauge. Different meter types result in a different number of time series metrics. For example, while there is a single metric that represents a Gauge, a Timer measures both the count of timed events and the total time of all timed events.

A meter is uniquely identified by its name and dimensions. We use the terms, “dimensions” and “tags,” interchangeably, and the Micrometer interface is Tag simply because it is shorter. As a general rule, it should be possible to use the name as a pivot. Dimensions let a particular named metric be sliced to drill down and reason about the data. This means that, if only the name is selected, you can drill down by using other dimensions and reason about the value being shown.