[HN Gopher] OpenTelemetry
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OpenTelemetry
 
Author : 9woc
Score  : 37 points
Date   : 2021-10-26 07:06 UTC (1 days ago)
 
web link (opentelemetry.io)
w3m dump (opentelemetry.io)
 
| splittingTimes wrote:
| We are trying to get a better understanding of how customers use
| our desktop application. We are urged by management to use
| Qualtrics, but it feels like it is not the right tool for the
| job.
| 
| How would you say does opentelemetry compare to Qualtrics?
| 
| Is Qualtrics a tool where users need to actively fill out surveys
| and opentelemetry collects passively user interactions?
| 
| There is also other names floating around in this space like
| DataDog or OpsTrace, where I am not clear how to place them.
 
  | lizthegrey wrote:
  | OpenTelemetry allows you to measure performance of your
  | frontend and backend, but it's not a survey tool. DataDog is
  | one of many compatible backends that works with OpenTelemetry,
  | but you can also use Jaeger OSS, Honeycomb, Lightstep, and
  | others.
 
    | splittingTimes wrote:
    | Strictly only the performance or can it also answer usage
    | questions like:
    | 
    | When customers go through this workflow step, they use this
    | option/button 90% of the time and the other options are used
    | rarely?
 
| lizthegrey wrote:
| Hello, Hacker News! https://share.getcloudapp.com/4guP9P6p (stats
| gathered from opentelemetry-js)
 
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Not a mention of "opt-in only, because we respect privacy"...
| 
| Please stop helping spy on users! Be the change you want to see
| in the world!
 
  | sveiss wrote:
  | That's because this tool has nothing to do with "spying on
  | users".
  | 
  | It's a set of tools and a specification for instrumenting
  | applications and collecting logs/metrics/traces from them. It's
  | used to ask questions like "why is this page slow to load?" and
  | get answers like "because it talks to the billing microservice
  | which has a really slow SQL query".
  | 
  | This isn't the same sort of telemetry that desktop software
  | vendors collect.
 
    | dmitrygr wrote:
    | Sadly, it seems you are wrong:
    | https://opentelemetry.io/docs/js/
    | 
    | "the browser"
    | 
    | That means they are running code on my machine and
    | exfiltrating data out.
 
      | rad_gruchalski wrote:
      | Define "they", please.
 
| iddan wrote:
| I really hope we'll have an open standard for tracing. Right now
| the common solutions are vendor-locking and can't be integrated
| in OSS projects
 
  | phillipcarter wrote:
  | That's definitely a goal of OTel! And it seems to be working.
  | Anecdotally, OTel support has been very important for my
  | workplace (we sell observability tooling
  | https://www.honeycomb.io/) in terms of prospects. I think a lot
  | of decision makers at companies are realizing that they can't
  | afford _not_ to have vendor-neutral instrumentation.
  | 
  | And tracing is GA in most SDKs as well, so you should feel
  | ready to adopt it. Several vendors and OSS tools support it (or
  | you can export your data to another format with the OTel
  | Collector).
 
    | lizthegrey wrote:
    | Phillip also wrote https://leaddev.com/monitoring-
    | observability/rise-openteleme... today, but is too shy to
    | plug it :)
 
  | Thaxll wrote:
  | Open tracing works just fine.
 
| spullara wrote:
| I hate that this specification and most of the other ones use
| spans that have a beginning and end rather than events that start
| and end the span. What if it crashes before it sends out the
| span? What if it is taking a very long time to complete?
 
  | beeandapenguin wrote:
  | For the long running scenario, why not use Links? The
  | specification describes[1] a similar scenario and how links can
  | be leveraged to causally relate spans even across trace
  | boundaries.
  | 
  | As for the crashing scenario, this seems like an application-
  | level concern. Ideally it is not waiting until the crash to
  | send traces. Depending on the environment, the application
  | could handle the crash and deliver the telemetry leading up to
  | it before shutting down.
  | 
  | [1]: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-
  | specificatio...
 
  | rad_gruchalski wrote:
  | You can emit multiple spans yourself, no?
 
  | novok wrote:
  | Data query wise it's significantly more complicated to compile
  | 2 db row spans than it is to do queries on one db row spans.
  | The library that makes and manages those spans before uploading
  | can deal with those use cases internally if it wants, a lot of
  | these systems have support for single point events too.
 
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(page generated 2021-10-27 23:00 UTC)