Company
Date Published
Author
Prashant Jain, Bowen Chen
Word count
950
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

W3C Trace Context aims to unify trace data from distributed tracing solutions by defining a standardized format. Datadog APM, Serverless, Synthetic Monitoring, and Real User Monitoring (RUM) now provide out-of-the-box support for W3C Trace Context, enabling complete trace propagation across services instrumented with different tools. This allows developers to view full traces as they propagate from their root to terminal service, improving the observability of applications and enhancing troubleshooting capabilities. The standardized format splits trace context data into two headers: `traceparent` and `tracestate`, which enable interoperability between tracing tools and support vendor-specific information propagation. With W3C Trace Context support, developers can track complete paths of requests, providing invaluable context for troubleshooting and end-to-end visibility across the Datadog platform.