Look into temporality

[komuw]

Temporality refers to how additive measurements are reported in relation to time.
There are two temporalities;
(a) Delta
[t0, 5], [t0+10, 5], [t0+20, 10], [t0+30, 20], [t0+40, 5]
(b) Cumulative
[t0, 5], [t0+10, 10], [t0+20, 20], [t0+30, 40], [t0+40, 45]

You should prefer Cumulative.
Opentelemetry supports changing the temporality via an env var[5]. The default is cumulative

1. https://grafana.com/blog/2023/09/26/opentelemetry-metrics-a-guide-to-delta-vs.-cumulative-temporality-trade-offs/
2. https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/metrics/data-model/#temporality
3. https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/metrics/supplementary-guidelines/#aggregation-temporality
4. https://sodkiewiczm.medium.com/opentelemetry-parameter-that-might-ruin-your-flexibility-edf3aa0d290a
5. https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/metrics/sdk_exporters/otlp/#additional-configuration