1. A method for determining a root cause of a performance issue of a software application executing in a distributed computer system, the distributed computer system including multiple components, the method comprising: constructing a hierarchical graph of metrics of a component of the distributed computer system based on search traces of the metrics of different users, where a parent-child edge between a first metric and a second metric in the hierarchical graph is constructed when there is a sequential association between the search traces of the first metric and the second metric for the different users, and where a sibling edge between the first metric and the second metric in the hierarchical graph is constructed when there is no sequential association between the search traces of the first metric and the second metric for the different users; and providing a metric investigation recommendation to address the performance issue based on traversal of the hierarchical graph of the metrics.