Fix Operation name logging for Netty based applications

[neinoi]

Fix Operation name logging for Netty based applications

(@trask Report of PR #1494 on ApplicationInsights-Java repo)

[laurit]

See https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/blob/main/specification/trace/semantic_conventions/http.md

Instrumentation MUST NOT default to using URI path as span name

[neinoi]

@laurit if I follow your recommandation, all my operations will be « HTTP GET » … so I can let « netty.request » the result is the same.

These are more usefull : https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/blob/main/specification/trace/api.md#span

[iNikem]

As @laurit correctly noticed, using full URL (even without query string) violates Otel semantic convention and general requirement for low cardinality of the span names.

[neinoi]

Here without my modifications :

I agree, for low cardinality it’s perfect, all calls have the same name.

Here after my modifications (first version, before my last modifications) :

It’s not perfect, but I think a bit better.

[trask]

Hi @neinoi! As appealing as it is to use the path as the span name, it doesn't work well for applications that have an unbounded number of (parameterized) paths.

Since the one-size-fits-all span name is not that great (and we all agree that HTTP GET is not that great 😄), there are ways for applications to customize the span name.

Since you are using Application Insights, if you open an issue in that repo, I can explain the different options for customizing the span name (which are a bit specific to Application Insights, since we don't use the OTel Collector, and our OTel API interoperability is under a preview flag).

If you'd like to continue with this PR, changing the span name to HTTP {method} would be great, we missed netty.request previously when updating to the OpenTelemetry semantic conventions, and it would be a good update this.

[neinoi]

Hi @trask ,
I’ve modified the code to have HTTP {method} for the span name.
For the options, is this the good place to go : java-standalone-telemetry-processors ?
(I will transmit these informations to my successor in my current project)

[trask]

Thanks @neinoi!

For the options, is this the good place to go : java-standalone-telemetry-processors ?

Yes, that's a good option. Another option is https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/java-in-process-agent#override-the-request-telemetry-name-using-the-2x-sdk.