Adriana Villela & Reese Lee - Dude, Where’s My Error? How OpenTelemetry Records Errors, and Why It Does It Like That

When an app crashes or throws an exception, these errors are not just useful, but vital, to record. However: * How an error is visualized in a backend may not be where you think it’ll be, or how you expect it to look. * Only looking at errors could mean you’re missing out on understanding your system holistically, including other failures that may be causing user dissatisfaction. In this session, Adriana & Reese will examine errors using OpenTelemetry (OTel). They will discuss how OTel records errors, how to enhance spans with metadata to streamline troubleshooting, and explore the distinction between errors and exceptions. They'll also look at how the same error is visualized in different backends, and teach about the different span kinds and how they affect error reporting. Attendees will be empowered to navigate the complexities of error handling in their software applications by leveraging OTel’s capabilities to better understand how things are working (or not) in their apps.