After attribute/semantic convention reaches stability, there is very little benefit in renaming attributes, metrics, or events.
Even though schema transformation can hypothetically patch old data and align it with newer version, it would not help custom tooling: custom queries, alerts, and dashboards that are built on top of old schema.
Given that risks and complexity are high and benefits are low, should we keep allowing renames? If so, we should define the bar and clarify that rename is an exceptional thing.
trask
commented
5 months ago
Currently, spec allows to rename things:
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/blob/4229197f45f0da0642bc7c0127e84c8aa1439489/specification/versioning-and-stability.md?plain=1#L233-L239
After attribute/semantic convention reaches stability, there is very little benefit in renaming attributes, metrics, or events.
Even though schema transformation can hypothetically patch old data and align it with newer version, it would not help custom tooling: custom queries, alerts, and dashboards that are built on top of old schema.
Given that risks and complexity are high and benefits are low, should we keep allowing renames? If so, we should define the bar and clarify that rename is an exceptional thing.