Distributed tracing of huge spans for application and dependent application performance monitoring

Methods and systems for providing distributed tracing for application performance monitoring utilizing a distributed search engine in a microservices architecture. An example method comprises providing a user interface (UI) including a distributed trace indicating in real time the services invoked to serve an incoming HTTP request including dependent services, the UI further including, in a single view, associated execution times for the services and dependent services shown as a timeline waterfall. The distributed trace automatically propagates a trace ID to link services end-to-end in real time until a response to the request is served. Spans associated with the services and dependent can be compressed using various techniques provided for herein.