Feature Idea: Connecting Metrics to Traces

[eerhardt]

Now that we have both Metrics and Traces in the dashboard, we should consider connecting the two, so I can drill in to data I see in my Metrics graphs, and figure out why something is taking so long.

For example, in the sample app, the first time I click the cart button on the top right, it causes a spike in duration of HTTP requests.

It would be great if I could drill in to that request to see what took so long.

One idea is to use exemplars, which is a feature in OpenTelemetry that allows getting a value in a histogram bucket and being able to see the trace ID for that value, so you can jump to a trace.

cc @davidfowl @JamesNK @samsp-msft

[samsp-msft]

This is exactly what examplars are for. They are still pretty rough at this stage, and you don't get to control which activities are tracked by the exemplar. I would suggest this is a .NET 9 feature.

@cijothomas, @CodeBlanch

[samsp-msft]

The exemplar support is going to be shipped with the OpenTelemetry.NET 1.9 release next week.

@JamesNK

[samsp-msft]

I would suggest something like:

Where the exemplars are shown as points on the graph. Hovering over the point will show the value and time.

Clicking a point will bring up a popup panel showing the details of the point, and the ability to link off to the traces page or logs for the SpanId associated with the exemplar.

[samsp-msft]

Clearing milestone so we can re-triage

[mitchdenny]

@samsp-msft I'm assuming this is something we will do eventually right? So can go back on Backlog (its not something we would not do ... its just about resources & priorities).

[samsp-msft]

@mitchdenny Exemplars is the cool new feature for OTel and something we will be making noise about. I want people to be able to use/view them for Aspire from the dashboard.
The OTel library support has shipped, what's missing at this point is support in the dashboard.