Split the data model into its own document?

[rakyll]

Trace and metrics API documents are both capturing the data model and the API concepts. Both of these documents are pretty long and not easy to read if you just want to focus on the data model.

I assume over time, there will be tools and libraries that will try to implement the OTel spec just by implementing the data model. For example, a visualization tool that works with the trace data or a custom instrumentation library that doesn't have to follow the API guide here. It'd be good to split the data model into its own document for these potential consumers.

I'd like to work on splitting the trace one if this is a good idea.

[Oberon00]

There is https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/blob/master/specification/overview.md, which should be a sufficient overfiew. Beyond that, I don't think we should prescribe too much of a data model, as e.g. a streaming SDK could use a quite different data model from a "normal" SDK implementation that has span objects in memory.