# Make database queries visible

The **Database** tab shows which database systems your service talks to, RED
metrics per operation (rate, errors, latency), and connection-pool health. It's
built entirely from telemetry your app emits — if the tab is empty, this is the
checklist to work through. Each item maps directly to what the tab reads.

![Database tab — PostgreSQL per-operation analytics and connection-pool health](/assets/nais-apm-service-fpsoknad-database-pg.png)

## Requirements checklist

### 1. Database client spans

Your app must export **OpenTelemetry CLIENT-kind spans** for its database calls,
carrying the `db.system` attribute (and ideally `db.operation`).

Auto-instrumentation produces these **without code changes**:

- the **OTel Java agent** (JDBC, the MongoDB driver, Lettuce/Redis);
- **OTel Node.js** instrumentations (`pg`, `mysql2`, `mongodb`, `ioredis`);
- equivalents for Go and Python.

If your service already appears on the [Traces tab](/observability/apm/tutorials/get-started.md#5-drill-into-traces-and-logs)
with database spans, this part is done.

The platform turns those spans into the per-operation metrics the tab reads —
you don't configure that. If the Traces tab shows database spans but the
Database tab stays empty, it's a platform-side gap rather than anything in your
app; ask on [#nais](https://nav-it.slack.com/messages/C5KUST8N6).

### 2. Connection-pool metrics (for the pool panels only)

Pool health and connection-acquisition-time charts additionally need
`db.client.connections.*` metrics (`db_client_connections_*` in Prometheus).

The **OTel Java agent emits these out of the box for JDBC/HikariCP pools.**
Driver-managed pools (for example the MongoDB Java driver) and Oracle UCP are
**not surfaced here today.**

## What you'll see when it's partially instrumented

| You have | You see |
| --- | --- |
| Spans **and** pool metrics | Full Database tab — query analytics and pool health |
| Spans but no pool metrics | Query analytics; a note that pool metrics aren't detected |
| Pool metrics but no spans | Pool panels; a note that database spans aren't detected |
| Neither | The full requirements checklist above |

![Database tab empty state — the instrumentation-requirements checklist](/assets/nais-apm-service-navno-database-empty.png)

## Related

- [Automatic observability](/observability.md#automatic-observability) — how Nais
  injects OpenTelemetry agents.
- [Get started with auto-instrumentation](/observability/how-to/auto-instrumentation.md)