The OpenTelemetry Spec
recently hit v1.0.1
(v1.0.0 with a fix soon after),
so what did I learn?
The spec itself is reasonably approachable, if a bit annoyingly spread out over multiple files.
Recommended reading is to start with the glossary then onto the overview. library layout is good for understanding where in general you should be looking for things. The semantic conventions are also worth looking over for the standardized names.
The idea is:
there's a standard library interface that is implemented in roughly the same way across multiple languages.
Client code (apps you write) that is being will always (and only) interact with api.
sdk will provide a default implementation,
which needs to be instantiated at the start of the program and wired to api,
and is responsible for exporting the data.
There are multiple transport formats to support different vendors,
including a new one specifically for OpenTelemetry,
hello XKCD Standards.