# Probe Introduction

In SkyWalking, probe means an agent or SDK library integrated into a target system that takes charge of collecting
telemetry data, including tracing and metrics. Depending on the target system tech stack, there are very different ways
how the probe performs such tasks. But ultimately, they all work towards the same goal — to collect and reformat data,
and then to send them to the backend.

On a high level, there are three typical categories in all SkyWalking probes.

- **Language based native agent**. These agents run in target service user spaces, such as a part of user codes. For
  example, the SkyWalking Java agent uses the `-javaagent` command line argument to manipulate codes in runtime,
  where `manipulate` means to change and inject user's codes. Another kind of agents uses certain hook or intercept
  mechanism provided by target libraries. As you can see, these agents are based on languages and libraries.

- **Service Mesh probes**. Service Mesh probes collect data from sidecar, control plane in service mesh or proxy. In the
  old days, proxy is only used as an ingress of the whole cluster, but with the Service Mesh and sidecar, we can now
  perform observability functions.

- **3rd-party instrument library**. SkyWalking accepts many widely used instrument libraries data formats. It analyzes
  the data, transfers it to SkyWalking's formats of trace, metrics or both. This feature starts with accepting Zipkin
  span data. See
  [Receiver for Zipkin traces](../setup/backend/zipkin-trace.md) for more information.

You don't need to use **Language based native agent** and **Service Mesh probe** at the same time, since they both serve
to collect metrics data. Otherwise, your system will suffer twice the payload, and the analytic numbers will be doubled.

There are several recommended ways on how to use these probes:

1. Use **Language based native agent** only.
1. Use **3rd-party instrument library** only, like the Zipkin instrument ecosystem.
1. Use **Service Mesh probe** only.
1. Use **Service Mesh probe** with **Language based native agent** or **3rd-party instrument library** in tracing
   status. (Advanced usage)

What is the meaning of **in tracing status**?

By default, **Language based native agent** and **3rd-party instrument library** both send distributed traces to the
backend, where analyses and aggregation on those traces are performed. **In tracing status** means that the backend
considers these traces as something like logs. In other words, the backend saves them, and builds the links between
traces and metrics, like `which endpoint and service does the trace belong?`.

## What is next?

- Learn more about the probes supported by SkyWalking in [Service auto instrument agent](service-agent.md)
  , [Manual instrument SDK](manual-sdk.md) and [Zipkin receiver](../setup/backend/zipkin-trace.md).
- After understanding how the probe works, see the [backend overview](backend-overview.md) for more on analysis and
  persistence.

