A topology-based transversal analysis service has been created that correlates topologies of different domains of a distributed application and creates cross-domain “stories” for the different types of transactions provided by the distributed application. A “story” for a transaction type associates an event(s) with a node in an execution path of the transaction type. This provides context to the event(s) with respect to the transaction type (“transaction contextualization”) and their potential business impact. The story is a journal of previously detected events and/or information based on previously detected events. The events have been detected over multiple instances of a transaction type and the journal is contextualized within an aggregate of execution paths of the multiple instances of the transaction type. The story can be considered a computed, ongoing narrative around application and infrastructure performance events, and the narrative grows as more performance-related events are detected.