Summary

This chapter allowed us to learn or review some concepts that will assist us when instrumenting applications using OpenTelemetry. We looked at the building blocks of distributed tracing, which will come in handy when we go through instrumenting our first application with OpenTelemetry in Chapter 4, Distributed Tracing – Tracing Code Execution. We also started analyzing tracing data using tools that developers and operators make use of every day.

We then switched to the metrics signal; first, looking at the minimal contents of a metric, then comparing different data types commonly used to produce metrics and their structures. Discussing exemplars gave us a brief introduction to how correlating metrics with traces can create a more complete picture of what is happening within a system by combining telemetry across signals.

Looking at log formats and searching through logs to find information about the demo application allowed us to get familiar with yet another tool...