distributed tracing

Definitions

1. A method of tracking requests as they propagate through distributed systems by assigning each request a unique trace ID that follows it across service boundaries. Each service records a 'span' with timing and metadata, producing a trace that visualizes the entire request lifecycle. Essential for debugging latency in microservice architectures.

   In plain English: A way to follow a single user request as it bounces between many different services, showing exactly where time is spent and where things go wrong.

   Example: Distributed tracing showed that 80% of the checkout latency was a single downstream service making three redundant database calls — something no single service's logs could reveal.

Related Terms

• Observability
• SRE
• service mesh
• flame graph
• Monitoring
• Seq
• Jaeger
• Metrics Collection
• Saga
• BPF Security