Observability Glossary

Trace

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You can think of a trace as the trail of clues an author leaves in a mystery novel (or distributed system). Each clue (or span) provides a piece of the puzzle, enabling the detective (you) to reconstruct the sequence of events and understand what led to a particular outcome.

For example, in a web application, a trace might capture the journey of a user request as it passes through the frontend, backend, and database layers, highlighting any bottlenecks or errors along the way.

To implement tracing, you can use OpenTelemetry to instrument your code and collect tracing data. By correlating trace data with logs, you can get a deeper understanding of the behaviour of your application, even in the most uncommon situations. This will enable you to detect, diagnose and resolve issues faste.

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