Observability Glossary

OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry is the modern instrumentation framework for applications. It enables you to zoom in and see exactly what's going on, whether it's a slow database query or a bottleneck in your network.

For example, imagine you have a web application that randomly crashes every now and then. With OpenTelemetry, you can instrument your code to capture detailed information about the conditions in which the app crashes, how many database queries are being made before the crash, or what sort of input is provided by users before the crash. This data can then be used to pinpoint the exact cause of the crashes, ultimately enabling you to solve your problem.

In JavaScript, you can use the OpenTelemetry JavaScript SDK to instrument your code and start collecting telemetry data. OpenTelemetry is mostly known for its distributed tracing capabilities, but it's just as powerful for collecting logs and metrics.

Explore related concepts

Distributed Tracing

Distributed Tracing is a method for tracking the flow of requests through your application. It enables you to follow the journey of a request as it travels across multiple services, so you can see where things might be going wrong.

Instrumentation

The act of adding code to a software application to collect telemetry data about its behavior and performance.

Observability

Observability is the ability to understand how your application is working and behaving in production through telemetry data (logs, metrics, traces, wide events, etc.). It enables you detect, diagnose and resolve issues in your app before they impact your users and become problems.