How to disable tracing for some sql request once psycopg2 integration is setup ?

[r4mbo7]

Hi !

I want to integrate OpenTelemetry in a large project that use a postgresql database.

If I setup the psycopg2 integration like this in a tracing.py module...

from opentelemetry import trace
from opentelemetry.ext import psycopg2
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider

trace.set_tracer_provider(TracerProvider())

psycopg2.trace_integration()

... then I "magically" got spans emitted for every single database request made in project.

But I do not want a span for each request. In fact there is few requests that are valuables among all of them. I want to save few cpu, networks, logs and storage by avoiding to emit spans for most of these requests.

Can I still use opentelemtry psycopg2 integration ?
Should I use the start_as_current_span context for the few requests that I'm interested in ? If so, can I retrieve the attributes that were added in the span by the psycopg2 integration, i.e. can I re-use the psycopg2 integration subpackage ?

Many thanks.

[lzchen]

This is a good use case. Is there anything about the sql calls that you do not want to generate spans for share in common? Something that we might be able to use as a "filter" mechanism possibly for the psycopg2 integration? Similarly to exclude lists for flask.

Currently this is not a feature yet for the postgres integration. If you want to achieve the desired behaviour you are looking for, you will have to manually create spans for each of your database calls and not leverage the postgres integration.

[r4mbo7]

Thanks @lzchen for your suggestion. It's easier for me to gather the traces that interest me rather than to make exclusions.

So I will manually create spans and not leverage the postgres integration.

It seems there is no way to re-use parts of the postgres integration (like the one that set the sql request as attribute) for the spans than I'm interested in. Do I am missing something ? Otherwise that would be disappointing ☹️

[lzchen]

@r4mbo7
Correct, if you were to create spans manually, you would have to set all attributes yourself.