Chapter two: OpenTelemetry fundamentals

In this chapter, you learn the fundamentals of OpenTelemetry. Specifically, you’re introduced to core concepts and components of the OpenTelemetry standard and implementation. This will help you learn learn how, when, and why you use it in your applications.

Objectives

In this chapter, you learn answers to questions like:

What is OpenTelemetry?
Why should I be interested in it?
How do I use it?

Prerequisite knowledge

Before reading this chapter, you need to be familiar with telemetry concepts, including:

What telemetry is
How telemetry works
What data types telemetry supports
What traces are

You learned these concepts in chapter one of this masterclass.

You should also be familiar with:

General programming concepts, like key-value pairs, functions, and classes
Programming organizational structures, like libraries, frameworks, and repositories
Common networking concepts like requests, responses, and status codes