OTel

• OTel Attributes
• OTel Component Attributes
• OTel Scope Attributes
• Deprecated OTel Library Attributes

OTel Attributes

Attributes reserved for OpenTelemetry

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Stability
otel.span.sampling_result	string	The result value of the sampler for this span	DROP; RECORD_ONLY; RECORD_AND_SAMPLE
otel.status_code	string	Name of the code, either “OK” or “ERROR”. MUST NOT be set if the status code is UNSET.	OK; ERROR
otel.status_description	string	Description of the Status if it has a value, otherwise not set.	resource not found

otel.span.sampling_result has the following list of well-known values. If one of them applies, then the respective value MUST be used; otherwise, a custom value MAY be used.

Value	Description	Stability
DROP	The span is not sampled and not recording
RECORD_AND_SAMPLE	The span is sampled and recording
RECORD_ONLY	The span is not sampled, but recording

otel.status_code has the following list of well-known values. If one of them applies, then the respective value MUST be used; otherwise, a custom value MAY be used.

Value	Description	Stability
ERROR	The operation contains an error.
OK	The operation has been validated by an Application developer or Operator to have completed successfully.

OTel Component Attributes

Attributes used for OpenTelemetry component self-monitoring

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Stability
otel.component.name	string	A name uniquely identifying the instance of the OpenTelemetry component within its containing SDK instance. [1]	otlp_grpc_span_exporter/0; custom-name
otel.component.type	string	A name identifying the type of the OpenTelemetry component. [2]	batching_span_processor; com.example.MySpanExporter

[1] otel.component.name: Implementations SHOULD ensure a low cardinality for this attribute, even across application or SDK restarts. E.g. implementations MUST NOT use UUIDs as values for this attribute.

Implementations MAY achieve these goals by following a <otel.component.type>/<instance-counter> pattern, e.g. batching_span_processor/0. Hereby otel.component.type refers to the corresponding attribute value of the component.

The value of instance-counter MAY be automatically assigned by the component and uniqueness within the enclosing SDK instance MUST be guaranteed. For example, <instance-counter> MAY be implemented by using a monotonically increasing counter (starting with 0), which is incremented every time an instance of the given component type is started.

With this implementation, for example the first Batching Span Processor would have batching_span_processor/0 as otel.component.name, the second one batching_span_processor/1 and so on. These values will therefore be reused in the case of an application restart.

[2] otel.component.type: If none of the standardized values apply, implementations SHOULD use the language-defined name of the type. E.g. for Java the fully qualified classname SHOULD be used in this case.

otel.component.type has the following list of well-known values. If one of them applies, then the respective value MUST be used; otherwise, a custom value MAY be used.

Value	Description	Stability
batching_span_processor	The builtin SDK Batching Span Processor
otlp_grpc_span_exporter	OTLP span exporter over gRPC with protobuf serialization
otlp_http_json_span_exporter	OTLP span exporter over HTTP with JSON serialization
otlp_http_span_exporter	OTLP span exporter over HTTP with protobuf serialization
simple_span_processor	The builtin SDK Simple Span Processor

OTel Scope Attributes

Attributes used by non-OTLP exporters to represent OpenTelemetry Scope’s concepts.

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Stability
otel.scope.name	string	The name of the instrumentation scope - (InstrumentationScope.Name in OTLP).	io.opentelemetry.contrib.mongodb
otel.scope.version	string	The version of the instrumentation scope - (InstrumentationScope.Version in OTLP).	1.0.0

Deprecated OTel Library Attributes

Describes deprecated otel.library attributes.

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Stability
otel.library.name	string	Deprecated. Use the otel.scope.name attribute	io.opentelemetry.contrib.mongodb	Use the otel.scope.name attribute.
otel.library.version	string	Deprecated. Use the otel.scope.version attribute.	1.0.0	Use the otel.scope.version attribute.