opentracingjava

OpenTracing Java is a Java API and instrumentation for distributed tracing. It provides a vendor-neutral, cross-language specification for tracing requests as they travel through distributed systems. The Java implementation allows developers to instrument their Java applications to generate and propagate trace data. This data can then be collected by a tracing backend, such as Jaeger or Zipkin, to visualize the flow of requests, identify performance bottlenecks, and debug issues across multiple services.

The core concept in OpenTracing is the span, which represents a single operation within a distributed trace. Spans have a start and end time, a name, and can be associated with tags (key-value pairs) and logs (timestamped events). Spans are organized hierarchically into traces. When a request enters a system, a root span is typically created. As the request moves between services, new child spans are created and linked to their parent. This parent-child relationship allows for the reconstruction of the entire request path.

OpenTracing Java provides APIs for creating spans, adding tags and logs, and extracting and injecting span contexts. Span contexts are crucial for propagating trace information across service boundaries, typically via HTTP headers or message queue metadata. The instrumentation can be manual, where developers explicitly add tracing code, or automatic, where libraries and frameworks are auto-instrumented using agents or plugins. This flexibility allows for adoption across various application architectures.