A trace log (commonly referred to as distributed tracing) is a specialized type of system telemetry that records the end-to-end journey of a single request as it moves through various components of a software system. Unlike standard logs that only tell you what happened inside one isolated application, trace logs act like a map, showing you exactly how services interact, where bottlenecks occur, and how data flows across microservices, databases, and network boundaries. The Three Pillars of System Telemetry
To truly understand trace logs, it helps to see how they fit into the broader concept of system telemetry. In IT and software engineering, telemetry relies on the “Three Pillars of Observability”: Understanding Logs, Events, Spans, and Traces | Dzero Labs
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