Migrating from OpenTracing to OpenTelemetry

Jennifer Craig discusses the migration from OpenTracing to OpenTelemetry in the context of observability for Tyk API Gateway. The transition is prompted by the deprecation of OpenTracing and the maturation of OpenTelemetry, which offers a new standard for distributed tracing in cloud-native systems. The article emphasizes the importance of distributed tracing for monitoring and optimizing applications by visualizing service dependencies and performance. Craig outlines various migration strategies, including using a bridge, leveraging the OpenTelemetry collector, or starting from scratch, and addresses considerations such as context propagation, detail exposure, and potential pitfalls like exposing PII data. The maturity of OpenTelemetry and its components is evaluated, particularly in the context of the Go SDK used by Tyk, and key questions are posed to guide other organizations considering similar migrations. The article underscores the critical role of observability in software, particularly in cloud-native environments, and highlights the value of OpenTelemetry as an open standard supported by major observability tools.