Skip to content

OTEP: Extending attributes to support complex values #4485

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Jump to bottom
Merged
merged 63 commits into from
Jul 15, 2025
Merged

OTEP: Extending attributes to support complex values #4485

merged 63 commits into from
Jul 15, 2025
+311 −0

Conversation

lmolkova
Copy link

@lmolkova lmolkova commented Apr 22, 2025 •
edited
Loading

Related to #4468, #4414

This OTEP suggests a path forward on how to support complex attributes. It proposes to:

  • allow complex attributes on all signals by default on the API and SDK level
  • discourage them on metrics, resources, instrumentation scope, and identifying attributes on entities. If complex attribute is provided, it's probably by mistake, but we let backend decide.
  • provide guidance in semconv to default to flat attributes whenever possible and develop conventions with an assumption that complex attributes are not indexed, not queryable and not efficient.
  • documents how limits can apply to complex attributes (leaf nodes are counted towards the attribute count limit and are truncated based on the value limit) and suggests other ways to protect from users misusing complex attributes.

Having experimental phase for complex attributes limits the impact of this change and gives backends a graceful period to update.

Liudmila Molkova and others added 4 commits April 20, 2025 12:33
pellared
pellared reviewed Apr 22, 2025
View reviewed changes
pellared
pellared reviewed Apr 22, 2025
View reviewed changes
trask
trask reviewed Apr 22, 2025
View reviewed changes
Liudmila Molkova and others added 2 commits April 22, 2025 07:58
jack-berg
jack-berg reviewed Apr 22, 2025
View reviewed changes
@lmolkova lmolkova marked this pull request as ready for review April 22, 2025 22:45
@lmolkova lmolkova requested review from a team as code owners April 22, 2025 22:45
pellared
pellared reviewed Apr 23, 2025
View reviewed changes
Copy link
Member

@pellared pellared left a comment •
edited
Loading

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

In general, LGTM. There are still some things that would be good to have clarified.

@pellared pellared mentioned this pull request Apr 23, 2025
Open
@dyladan dyladan mentioned this pull request Apr 23, 2025
Open
trask
trask reviewed Apr 23, 2025
View reviewed changes
Liudmila Molkova and others added 2 commits April 23, 2025 16:09
@lmolkova lmolkova mentioned this pull request Apr 24, 2025
Open
Liudmila Molkova added 2 commits July 8, 2025 12:39
add pointer/ref as a future possibility, limit deep equailty requirem…
45a82c0 
…ents to implementations that allow using complex attrs on metrics, resources, entities, instr scope
toc
e0d8748
@reyang reyang enabled auto-merge July 15, 2025 00:38
@trask trask disabled auto-merge July 15, 2025 00:46
@lmolkova lmolkova added this pull request to the merge queue Jul 15, 2025
Merged via the queue into open-telemetry:main with commit 8aa1d27 Jul 15, 2025
6 checks passed
@lmolkova lmolkova deleted the complex-attributes branch July 15, 2025 17:14
@github-project-automation github-project-automation bot moved this from In Progress to Done in Go: Logs (GA) Jul 15, 2025
This was referenced Jul 16, 2025
Open
Open
Open
Open
@lmolkova lmolkova mentioned this pull request Jul 21, 2025
Closed
@lmolkova lmolkova mentioned this pull request Aug 2, 2025
Merged
@pellared pellared mentioned this pull request Aug 5, 2025
Open
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Reviewers

@hdost hdost hdost left review comments

@pellared pellared pellared approved these changes

@bantonsson bantonsson bantonsson left review comments

@trask trask trask approved these changes

@carlosalberto carlosalberto carlosalberto approved these changes

@dashpole dashpole dashpole approved these changes

@tsloughter tsloughter tsloughter approved these changes

@adriangb adriangb adriangb approved these changes

@tedsuo tedsuo tedsuo approved these changes

@jmacd jmacd jmacd approved these changes

@alanwest alanwest alanwest approved these changes

@austinlparker austinlparker austinlparker approved these changes

@tigrannajaryan tigrannajaryan tigrannajaryan approved these changes

@jsuereth jsuereth jsuereth approved these changes

@cijothomas cijothomas cijothomas approved these changes

@MrAlias MrAlias MrAlias approved these changes

@reyang reyang reyang approved these changes

@breedx-splk breedx-splk breedx-splk approved these changes

@jack-berg jack-berg Awaiting requested review from jack-berg

@XSAM XSAM Awaiting requested review from XSAM

@dyladan dyladan Awaiting requested review from dyladan

Assignees

@lmolkova lmolkova

Labels
changelog.opentelemetry.io
Projects
Go: Logs (GA)
Status: Done
Milestone
No milestone
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.