OpenTelemetry Integration

FlareLog SDK v2 is built on top of OpenTelemetry. While the SDK works out-of-the-box with zero OTel knowledge, understanding the OTel integration helps you leverage advanced features.

What is OpenTelemetry?

OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open-source observability framework that provides:

• Traces — Request flow across services
• Logs — Structured event records
• Metrics — Performance measurements

FlareLog uses OTel under the hood to provide these capabilities without requiring you to manage OTel directly.

When to Use OTel Features

You don't need to configure OTel explicitly for basic logging. The SDK handles everything automatically. However, you may want to use OTel features when:

• You need distributed tracing across multiple services
• You want to fan out to multiple backends (FlareLog + Grafana + Honeycomb)
• You're integrating with other OTel-compatible tools
• You need W3C trace context propagation for microservices

Architecture

Your Code → FlareLog SDK → OTel API → OTLP/HTTP JSON → Backend
                              ↓
                         Console (default)

The SDK abstracts OTel complexity while exposing it for advanced use cases.

Next Steps

• Trace Propagation — W3C headers and distributed tracing
• Fan-out — Ship to multiple backends simultaneously