Distributed Tracing Explained: How OpenTelemetry Fills the Observability Gap

Logs and metrics alone often fail to pinpoint performance bottlenecks in complex, multi-service systems, which is where distributed tracing becomes essential. A trace records the full journey of a single request across all services, making it possible to identify exactly which component — such as a slow database query — is causing latency. OpenTelemetry has emerged as the standard framework for implementing tracing, offering auto-instrumentation for HTTP calls and database queries with minimal setup. To manage costs in production, tail-based sampling allows teams to retain all error and slow-request traces while discarding the majority of routine ones. Common pitfalls include failing to propagate trace context between services, over-sampling early on, and omitting business identifiers like user or order IDs that make traces genuinely actionable.