Just traces are a long way off from APM and NPM. APM gives me the ability to debug memory leaks from continuous heap snapshots, or performance issues through CPU profiling. NPM is almost like having tcpdump running constantly, showing me where there's packet loss or other forms of connectivity issues.
Thank you for sharing this, I've had "look at tracing" on my to do list for months and assumed it was identical to APM. It seems it won't be a direct substitute, which helps explain the cost difference.
