Instrumenting For Distributed Tracing

Traces track the progression of a single activity in an application. For example, an activity can be a user making a request in our application. If a trace only tracks the progression of that activity in a single process or a single component of a system composed of many components, its value is limited. However, if a trace can be propagated across multiple components in a system, it becomes much more useful. Traces that can propagate across components in a system are called distributed traces. Distributed tracing and correlation of activities is a powerful tool for determining causality within a complex system.