Semantic conventions for RPC spans

NOTICE Semantic Conventions are moving to a new location.

No changes to this document are allowed.

Status: Experimental

This document defines how to describe remote procedure calls (also called “remote method invocations” / “RMI”) with spans.

Warning Existing RPC instrumentations that are using v1.20.0 of this document (or prior):

• SHOULD NOT change the version of the networking attributes that they emit until the HTTP semantic conventions are marked stable (HTTP stabilization will include stabilization of a core set of networking attributes which are also used in RPC instrumentations).
• SHOULD introduce an environment variable OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN in the existing major version which supports the following values:
  • none - continue emitting whatever version of the old experimental networking attributes the instrumentation was emitting previously. This is the default value.
  • http - emit the new, stable networking attributes, and stop emitting the old experimental networking attributes that the instrumentation emitted previously.
  • http/dup - emit both the old and the stable networking attributes, allowing for a seamless transition.
• SHOULD maintain (security patching at a minimum) the existing major version for at least six months after it starts emitting both sets of attributes.
• SHOULD drop the environment variable in the next major version (stable next major version SHOULD NOT be released prior to October 1, 2023).

Common remote procedure call conventions

A remote procedure calls is described by two separate spans, one on the client-side and one on the server-side.

For outgoing requests, the SpanKind MUST be set to CLIENT and for incoming requests to SERVER.

Remote procedure calls can only be represented with these semantic conventions, when the names of the called service and method are known and available.

Span name

The span name MUST be the full RPC method name formatted as:

$package.$service/$method

(where $service MUST NOT contain dots and $method MUST NOT contain slashes)

If there is no package name or if it is unknown, the $package. part (including the period) is omitted.

Examples of span names:

• grpc.test.EchoService/Echo
• com.example.ExampleRmiService/exampleMethod
• MyCalcService.Calculator/Add reported by the server and MyServiceReference.ICalculator/Add reported by the client for .NET WCF calls
• MyServiceWithNoPackage/theMethod

Common attributes

[1]: This is the logical name of the service from the RPC interface perspective, which can be different from the name of any implementing class. The code.namespace attribute may be used to store the latter (despite the attribute name, it may include a class name; e.g., class with method actually executing the call on the server side, RPC client stub class on the client side).

[2]: This is the logical name of the method from the RPC interface perspective, which can be different from the name of any implementing method/function. The code.function attribute may be used to store the latter (e.g., method actually executing the call on the server side, RPC client stub method on the client side).

[3]: May contain server IP address, DNS name, or local socket name. When host component is an IP address, instrumentations SHOULD NOT do a reverse proxy lookup to obtain DNS name and SHOULD set server.address to the IP address provided in the host component.

[4]: If different than server.port and if server.socket.address is set.

Additional attribute requirements: At least one of the following sets of attributes is required:

• server.socket.address
• server.address

rpc.system has the following list of well-known values. If one of them applies, then the respective value MUST be used, otherwise a custom value MAY be used.

For client-side spans server.port is required if the connection is IP-based and the port is available (it describes the server port they are connecting to). For server-side spans client.socket.port is optional (it describes the port the client is connecting from).

Service name

On the server process receiving and handling the remote procedure call, the service name provided in rpc.service does not necessarily have to match the service.name resource attribute. One process can expose multiple RPC endpoints and thus have multiple RPC service names. From a deployment perspective, as expressed by the service.* resource attributes, it will be treated as one deployed service with one service.name. Likewise, on clients sending RPC requests to a server, the service name provided in rpc.service does not have to match the peer.service span attribute.

As an example, given a process deployed as QuoteService, this would be the name that goes into the service.name resource attribute which applies to the entire process. This process could expose two RPC endpoints, one called CurrencyQuotes (= rpc.service) with a method called getMeanRate (= rpc.method) and the other endpoint called StockQuotes (= rpc.service) with two methods getCurrentBid and getLastClose (= rpc.method). In this example, spans representing client request should have their peer.service attribute set to QuoteService as well to match the server’s service.name resource attribute. Generally, a user SHOULD NOT set peer.service to a fully qualified RPC service name.

Client attributes

[1]: Typically observed from the client side, and represents a proxy or other intermediary domain name.

[2]: If different than server.address and if server.socket.address is set.

Server attributes

[1]: When observed from the server side, and when communicating through an intermediary, client.address SHOULD represent client address behind any intermediaries (e.g. proxies) if it’s available.

[2]: When observed from the server side, and when communicating through an intermediary, client.port SHOULD represent client port behind any intermediaries (e.g. proxies) if it’s available.

Events

In the lifetime of an RPC stream, an event for each message sent/received on client and server spans SHOULD be created. In case of unary calls only one sent and one received message will be recorded for both client and server spans.

The event name MUST be message.

[1]: This way we guarantee that the values will be consistent between different implementations.

message.type MUST be one of the following:

Distinction from HTTP spans

HTTP calls can generally be represented using just HTTP spans. If they address a particular remote service and method known to the caller, i.e., when it is a remote procedure call transported over HTTP, the rpc.* attributes might be added additionally on that span, or in a separate RPC span that is a parent of the transporting HTTP call. Note that method in this context is about the called remote procedure and not the HTTP verb (GET, POST, etc.).

gRPC

For remote procedure calls via gRPC, additional conventions are described in this section.

rpc.system MUST be set to "grpc".

gRPC Attributes

rpc.grpc.status_code MUST be one of the following:

gRPC Status

The table below describes when the Span Status MUST be set to Error or remain unset depending on the gRPC status code and Span Kind.

gRPC Request and Response Metadata

[1]: Instrumentations SHOULD require an explicit configuration of which metadata values are to be captured. Including all request/response metadata values can be a security risk - explicit configuration helps avoid leaking sensitive information.

Connect RPC conventions

For remote procedure calls via connect, additional conventions are described in this section.

rpc.system MUST be set to "connect_rpc".

Connect RPC Attributes

Below is a table of attributes that SHOULD be included on client and server RPC measurements when rpc.system is "connect_rpc".

[1]: If response is not successful and if error code available.

rpc.connect_rpc.error_code MUST be one of the following:

Connect RPC Status

If rpc.connect_rpc.error_code is set, Span Status MUST be set to Error and left unset in all other cases.

Connect RPC Request and Response Metadata

[1]: Instrumentations SHOULD require an explicit configuration of which metadata values are to be captured. Including all request/response metadata values can be a security risk - explicit configuration helps avoid leaking sensitive information.

JSON RPC

Conventions specific to JSON RPC.

rpc.system MUST be set to "jsonrpc".

JSON RPC Attributes

[1]: This is always required for jsonrpc. See the note in the general RPC conventions for more information.