this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
12 points (100.0% liked)
General Programming Discussion
7814 readers
1 users here now
A general programming discussion community.
Rules:
- Be civil.
- Please start discussions that spark conversation
Other communities
Systems
Functional Programming
Also related
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Thinking out loud here...
In my experience with traditional logging and distributed systems, timestamps and request IDs do store the information required to partially reconstruct a timeline:
For example, consider the following relatively simple diagram.
Reconstructing the causality and join/fork relations between the executions nodes is almost impossible using traditional logs whereas a tracing solution will turn this into a nice visual w/ all the spans and sub-spans.
That said, logs do shine when things go wrong; when you start your investigation by using a stacktrace in the logs as a clue. That (stacktrace) is something that I'm not sure a tracing solution will be able to provide.
Yes! You nailed it ๐ฏ
Logs are indispensable for troubleshooting (and potentially nothing else) while tracers are great for, well, tracing the data/request throughout the system and analyse the mutations.