OpenTelemetry series: Understanding OTel traces and spans

This article explains how OpenTelemetry uses traces and spans to provide end-to-end visibility into the journey of requests within complex distributed systems like microservices and AI workflows. It describes how traces track a transaction's full lifecycle while hierarchical "spans" act as building blocks that capture specific units of work, including timing, errors, and metadata. By analyzing these components, developers can effectively identify latency, troubleshoot failures, and understand service dependencies.