Semantic conventions for AWS SNS

Status: Development

• AWS SNS spans
  • Send span (producer)

The Semantic Conventions for AWS SNS extend the general AWS SDK Semantic Conventions that describe common AWS SDK attributes in addition to the Semantic Conventions described on this page.

AWS SNS spans

AWS SNS refines the generic messaging spans.

Send span (producer)

Status:

Describes a producer publishing one or more messages to Amazon SNS.

Use this span when no separate “Create” span exists and the “Send” span’s context is injected into the message(s) as the creation context. See Producer spans for details.

Span kind SHOULD be PRODUCER.

Span status SHOULD follow the Recording Errors document.

Attributes:

Key	Stability	Requirement Level	Value Type	Description	Example Values
messaging.operation.name		Required	string	The system-specific name of the messaging operation.	send; publish
messaging.system		Required	string	The messaging system as identified by the client instrumentation. [1]	aws.sns
error.type		Conditionally Required If and only if the messaging operation has failed.	string	Describes a class of error the operation ended with. [2]	AuthorizationError; EndpointDisabled; Throttled
messaging.batch.message_count		Conditionally Required [3]	int	The number of messages sent, received, or processed in the scope of the batching operation. [4]	0; 1; 2
messaging.destination.name		Conditionally Required [5]	string	The message destination name [6]	MyTopic
messaging.destination.template		Conditionally Required [7]	string	Low cardinality representation of the messaging destination name [8]	/customers/{customerId}
messaging.operation.type		Conditionally Required If applicable.	string	A string identifying the type of the messaging operation. [9]	send
aws.request_id		Recommended	string	The AWS request ID as returned in the response headers x-amzn-requestid, x-amzn-request-id or x-amz-request-id.	79b9da39-b7ae-508a-a6bc-864b2829c622; C9ER4AJX75574TDJ
aws.sns.topic.arn		Recommended	string	The ARN of the AWS SNS Topic. An Amazon SNS topic is a logical access point that acts as a communication channel.	arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:mystack-mytopic-NZJ5JSMVGFIE
messaging.client.id		Recommended	string	A unique identifier for the client that consumes or produces a message.	client-5; myhost@8742@s8083jm
messaging.destination.partition.id		Recommended When applicable.	string	The identifier of the partition messages are sent to or received from, unique within the messaging.destination.name.	1
messaging.message.conversation_id		Recommended	string	The conversation ID identifying the conversation to which the message belongs, represented as a string. Sometimes called “Correlation ID”.	MyConversationId
messaging.message.id		Recommended If span describes operation on a single message.	string	A value used by the messaging system as an identifier for the message, represented as a string.	452a7c7c7c7048c2f887f61572b18fc2
network.peer.address		Recommended If applicable for this messaging system.	string	Peer address of the messaging intermediary node where the operation was performed. [10]	10.1.2.80; /tmp/my.sock
network.peer.port		Recommended if and only if network.peer.address is set.	int	Peer port of the messaging intermediary node where the operation was performed.	65123
server.address		Recommended	string	Server domain name if available without reverse DNS lookup; otherwise, IP address or UNIX domain socket name. [11]	example.com; 10.1.2.80; /tmp/my.sock
server.port		Recommended	int	Server port number. [12]	80; 8080; 443
messaging.message.body.size		Opt-In	int	The size of the message body in bytes. Only applicable for spans describing single message operations. [13]	1439
messaging.message.envelope.size		Opt-In	int	The size of the message body and metadata in bytes. [14]	2738

[1] messaging.system: MUST be set to "aws.sns".

[2] error.type: The error.type SHOULD be predictable, and SHOULD have low cardinality.

When error.type is set to a type (e.g., an exception type), its canonical class name identifying the type within the artifact SHOULD be used.

If the recorded error type is a wrapper that is not meaningful for failure classification, instrumentation MAY use the type of the inner error instead. For example, in Go, errors created with fmt.Errorf using %w MAY be unwrapped when the wrapper type does not help classify the failure.

Instrumentations SHOULD document the list of errors they report.

The cardinality of error.type within one instrumentation library SHOULD be low. Telemetry consumers that aggregate data from multiple instrumentation libraries and applications should be prepared for error.type to have high cardinality at query time when no additional filters are applied.

If the operation has completed successfully, instrumentations SHOULD NOT set error.type.

If a specific domain defines its own set of error identifiers (such as HTTP or RPC status codes), it’s RECOMMENDED to:

• Use a domain-specific attribute
• Set error.type to capture all errors, regardless of whether they are defined within the domain-specific set or not.

[3] messaging.batch.message_count: If the span describes an operation on a batch of messages.

[4] messaging.batch.message_count: Instrumentations SHOULD NOT set messaging.batch.message_count on spans that operate with a single message. When a messaging client library supports both batch and single-message API for the same operation, instrumentations SHOULD use messaging.batch.message_count for batching APIs and SHOULD NOT use it for single-message APIs.

[5] messaging.destination.name: If span describes operation on a single message or if the value applies to all messages in the batch.

[6] messaging.destination.name: SHOULD uniquely identify a specific queue, topic or other entity within the broker. If the broker doesn’t have such notion, it SHOULD uniquely identify the broker.

[7] messaging.destination.template: If available. Instrumentations MUST NOT use messaging.destination.name as template unless low-cardinality of destination name is guaranteed.

[8] messaging.destination.template: Destination names could be constructed from templates. An example would be a destination name involving a username or product ID. Although the destination name in this case is of high cardinality, the underlying template is of low cardinality and can be effectively used for grouping and aggregation.

[9] messaging.operation.type: SHOULD be set to send.

[10] network.peer.address: Semantic conventions for individual messaging systems SHOULD document whether network.peer.* attributes are applicable. Network peer address and port are important when the application interacts with individual intermediary nodes directly, If a messaging operation involved multiple network calls (for example retries), the address of the last contacted node SHOULD be used.

[11] server.address: Server domain name of the broker if available without reverse DNS lookup; otherwise, IP address or UNIX domain socket name.

[12] server.port: When observed from the client side, and when communicating through an intermediary, server.port SHOULD represent the server port behind any intermediaries, for example proxies, if it’s available.

[13] messaging.message.body.size: This can refer to both the compressed or uncompressed body size. If both sizes are known, the uncompressed body size should be used.

[14] messaging.message.envelope.size: This can refer to both the compressed or uncompressed size. If both sizes are known, the uncompressed size should be used.

The following attributes can be important for making sampling decisions and SHOULD be provided at span creation time (if provided at all):

• messaging.destination.name
• messaging.destination.partition.id
• messaging.destination.template
• messaging.operation.name
• messaging.operation.type
• messaging.system
• server.address
• server.port

error.type 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.

Value	Description	Stability
_OTHER	A fallback error value to be used when the instrumentation doesn’t define a custom value.

messaging.operation.type 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.

Value	Description	Stability
create	A message is created. “Create” spans always refer to a single message and are used to provide a unique creation context for messages in batch sending scenarios.
process	One or more messages are processed by a consumer.
receive	One or more messages are requested by a consumer. This operation refers to pull-based scenarios, where consumers explicitly call methods of messaging SDKs to receive messages.
send	One or more messages are provided for sending to an intermediary. If a single message is sent, the context of the “Send” span can be used as the creation context and no “Create” span needs to be created.
settle	One or more messages are settled.

messaging.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.

Value	Description	Stability
activemq	Apache ActiveMQ
aws.sns	Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
aws_sqs	Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
eventgrid	Azure Event Grid
eventhubs	Azure Event Hubs
gcp_pubsub	Google Cloud Pub/Sub
jms	Java Message Service
kafka	Apache Kafka
pulsar	Apache Pulsar
rabbitmq	RabbitMQ
rocketmq	Apache RocketMQ
servicebus	Azure Service Bus