OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry is an open source observability framework that offers protocols and tools for collecting and routing telemetry data.

Observability allows users to understand a system’s performance from the outside.

OpenTelemetry breaks messages down into three main areas:

Logs
A timestamped message emitted by services or other components. These are not necessarily related to a specific business transaction.
Span
A span represents a unit of work or operation. A log may be included within a span, but a span adds metadata (Attributes) to provide information about the operation it tracks.
Distributed Traces (more commonly known as a Trace)
A distribute trace records the path taken by business requests as they propagate through multi-service architecture. A trace is made of one or more spans.

In addition, open telemetry often talks about metrics - a metric is a measurement of a service captured at runtime.

Beeks Analytics uses an extended OpenTelemetry framework to create integration points for its Core Data Feed. These are based around the OpenTelemetry’s distributed tracing concepts.

An Agent Event in Beeks is equivalent to a Span in OpenTelemetry.

An Item in Beeks is equivalent to a Trace in OpenTelemetry.

Related terms