OpenTelemetry collector integration

[ocervell]

Hi all,

Seems like we need more clarification in the docs on how to export trace & metrics data to the OpenTelemetry Collector.

The OpenTelemetry OTLP exporter vs the OpenTelemetry OpenCensus exporter, is a bit confusing, since they're both supposed to export data to the OpenTelemetry Collector.

• OpenTelemetry OTLP Exporter (opentelemetry-ext-otlp): exports span data to OpenTelemetry Collector. No support for metrics data.

• OpenTelemetry OpenCensus Exporter (opentelemetry-ext-opencensusexporter): exports span & metrics data to OpenTelemetry Collector. What do we get from it if using OpenCensus SDK under the hood ?

• OpenTelemetry OTCollector package (opentelemetry-ext-otcollector): what is it for ?

@ocelotl is metrics export planned for the OTLP exporter ?

[codeboten]

Hello @ocervell,

To give a bit more background here. The initial exporter for the OpenTelemetry collector was using OpenCensus as it was the protocol initially implemented by the collector.

The opentelemetry-ext-otcollector package is deprecated, as it is now opentelemetry-ext-opencensusexporter.

The OTLP exporter will have support for metrics, there's a PR currently underway here #835 to solve #797. I think the long term goal will be to deprecate the opentelemetry-ext-opencensusexporter package as well.

[ocervell]

Hey @codeboten,

Sounds good to me. Are we advising to use the opentelemetry-ext-opencensusexporter until PR #835 and #797 are here ? It's currently the only way to have metrics flowing into metrics backends. And in the future, we'll replace invocations of this library by opentelemetry-ext-otcollector (hopefully with the same interface) ?

Thanks !

[codeboten]

If you're relying on metrics, then I would say it probably makes sense to keep going with the opencensus-exporter until the metrics exporter is implemented. The interface for the otcollector will be the same, as they both implement the exporter interfaces