Traces & Spans

Traces are a powerful feature in the Embrace Web SDK that give you complete visibility into any operation you'd like to track in your application.

What are Traces and Spans?

In the Embrace SDK (built on OpenTelemetry):

• A trace represents an entire operation or workflow in your application
• A span represents a single unit of work within that trace
• Spans can be nested, forming parent-child relationships to create a trace

Traces help you identify, prioritize, and resolve performance issues by providing detailed information about operations in your app.

Key Capabilities

With the Embrace Traces API, you can:

• Create real-time performance timers or record past operations
• Create child spans that can be attached to a parent
• Add attributes and events to each span for context
• Track success/failure states of operations

Trace Limits

Type	Limit
Max number of spans per session	100
Max number of spans per Root Span	10
Max number of attributes per span	50
Max number of events per span	10
Max number of attributes per event	10
Length of attribute keys	50 characters
Length of attribute values	200 characters
Length of Span names	50 characters
Length of Event names	100 characters

Naming Conventions

• Span Names are case-sensitive and are a max of 50 characters
• Key Names are case-sensitive, have a max of 50 characters, and are alpha-numeric

Internal Prefixes

The emb- and emb. prefixes are reserved for internal Embrace span names and attribute keys. You should never create a name with these prefixes.

Creating and Using Spans

See our guide on instrumentating Traces for examples on how to instrument your application.

Best Practices

• Use meaningful names for spans that reflect the operation being performed
• Create parent-child relationships to represent operation hierarchies
• Add relevant attributes to provide context for operations
• Keep span names consistent across your application for better analytics
• Consider how spans relate to sessions in your application architecture
• End spans properly to ensure they're recorded correctly