However, even in the general case, span name is not something dashboards and alerts should rely on:
span name is usually constructed from attributes that would be more reliable for queries, dashboards and alerts
span names can change depending on the available level of details (e.g. HTTP server span name looks like {method} {route} and route availability depends on the web framework).
span name format, case sensitivity could be hard to enforce and may depend on the language.
Span name should be fine in queries like "top N longest" or "top N with highest error rate" - then, when span names become more descriptive, such queries would produce even better results.
Changes
The context: we'd like to update span name for HTTP client spans to include HTTP route/operation name when it's available. Today span name includes only method (e.g.
GET
and could instead become more useful -GET users/{user_id}
). See https://github.com/open-telemetry/semantic-conventions/pull/675 and https://github.com/open-telemetry/semantic-conventions/issues/923 for more details.However, even in the general case, span name is not something dashboards and alerts should rely on:
{method} {route}
and route availability depends on the web framework).Span name should be fine in queries like "top N longest" or "top N with highest error rate" - then, when span names become more descriptive, such queries would produce even better results.
Related OTEP(s)Links to the prototypes (when adding or changing features)CHANGELOG.md
file updated for non-trivial changesspec-compliance-matrix.md
updated if necessary