Better documentation for tag search

[ncsibra]

There was a similar issue in the past #11, but that was closed with a mostly unrelated fix #145.
The original question was about the tag search operator possibilities, the issue which closed that, explain the tag search format.
I wasn't able to find any related documentation in documentation webpage or in the README files.

What I know from some related issues:

• all tag key/value pair has an AND relationship, OR is not possible yet
• pattern matching not possible

What I like to know:

• Is the search possibilities depends on the used storage? If so, how? Any documentation about it?
• Is it possible to search for missing tags?
• Is it possible to search for empty string? tag.name="" or tag.name= or tag.name does not work
• Are there any other supported operator? Like negation with NOT or !=, maybe less/greater or similar operator?

I tried the mentioned searches with the all-in-one image 1.1.0 version.

Thanks!

[tiffon]

@ncsibra Great questions, thanks for creating this ticket.

To address some of your questions:

• Correct, all tags are AND relationship
• Correct, pattern matching is not possible, right now

@yurishkuro or @vprithvi, can you confirm / correct / clarify the following points?

• Is the search possibilities depends on the used storage? If so, how? Any documentation about it?

AFAIK, search is not sensitive to the store.

• Is it possible to search for missing tags?

No, only exact matches are supported, so the tag must be present.

• Is it possible to search for empty string? tag.name="" or tag.name= or tag.name does not work

tag.name="" worked when I tried it on our internal system and the all-in-one docker image. One caveat is only the tags for the currently selected service/operation are checked.

• Are there any other supported operator? Like negation with NOT or !=, maybe less/greater or similar operator?

No, only exact matches are supported, right now.

I'm going to leave this open as a ticket for better docs around tag searching.

[ncsibra]

Hi @tiffon,

Thanks for your answer, you're right, the empty string search works, I assume some other service/operation were selected as you said.
So if I want any special search which is not possible through the UI, I can do through the used storage system and lookup by trace id, right?
Is there any documentation how Jaeger stores the data in the different storages?
I assume it's not a big deal to figure it out, but an offical guide always better.
Or is it an implementation detail and we should not rely on that?

[tiffon]

@ncsibra No problem, glad it was helpful.

I would say storage details are an implementation detail and relying on them would likely be precarious. But, my work is solely in the UI, so, just speculating.

So if I want any special search which is not possible through the UI, I can do through the used storage system and lookup by trace id, right?

Yes, that would work. And, the search page can view traces by traceID (as a possible convenience):

http://localhost:16686/search?traceID=473dc63135fff38c&traceID=618fc99dd12e046b&traceID=66c829d3c8fca378

Regarding docs on the storage, the source is probably the best place to look, which I believe is mostly here.

[ncsibra]

Ok, thanks, then we will check the storage itself, when necessary.

[ringerc]

Also useful to note if/how wildcards work, if they exist/work. Wildcard on tag name or value.

[sidner]

Hello, I am using as tag an UUID that I sometimes need to search for just the initial part of the UUID, but to my surprise regexes and wildcards are still not supported. Is this being worked on?

Thanks.

[mircea-pop]

@sidner seems this works now. Feature merged in jaegertracing/jaeger#2049

[Lupus]

Is it possible to find a trace by AND combination of tags, given that they are on different spans of this trace?

[yurishkuro]

@Lupus no, all search criteria are applied to the same span

[cptkng23]

Hi @tiffon and @yurishkuro

Following up on the (old) initial request of @ncsibra : Is there any documentation about how the search with tags exactly works, apart from the small contextual help (?) icon next to the Tags input field in the search bar?

Also, I have experienced that sometimes is seems possible to get results for Span logs when entering something in the Tags field, and sometimes not?

e.g.

• logKey1=.*valueContainedInLog1.* works
• logKey2=.*valueContainedInLog2.* does not work, even though the string is contained in logKey2.

Any idea why?

[tejaswiniVadlamudi]

Is it correct to define empty tag values like reason:""? Is it a good instrumentation practice?