OpenTelemetry captures database operations from the client perspective, in the context of an originating resource, application and request. How can this insight be matched to observations about the database server? This talk focuses on the sqlcommenter feature in OTel which propagates trace context in SQL queries, so that client- and server-side observations can be correlated to answer questions like “is this request slow due to the state of the database” and “where are the expensive queries to this database coming from".
We’ll briefly describe the challenge of context propagation, give an overview of the current state of sqlcommenter implementation in OTel SDKs, demonstrate the enriched correlation that can be built from it, and highlight limitations and pitfalls found along the way in adapting it into our product.
This talk aims to give viewers a good understanding of the OTel sqlcommenter feature and the integrated performance insight that it makes possible.
