Trace

Noun · Development

Definitions

  1. A record of a request's journey through a distributed system, composed of spans (timed operations) connected by parent-child relationships. Each span captures the service name, operation, duration, status, and metadata. Traces reveal where time is spent and which service caused a failure in a multi-service request path.

    In plain English: A detailed timeline showing exactly how a request traveled through multiple services and where it spent its time.

    Example: "The trace shows the request took 2.3 seconds — 1.8 seconds was spent waiting for the inventory service's database query."

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