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OTel Correlation Guides #30354

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@brett0000FF brett0000FF commented Jul 8, 2025

What does this PR do? What is the motivation?

Existing content was outdated and fragmented. This change unifies all correlation content into a set of guides.

Updates:

  • Logs info was outdated and overcomplicated--customers should use trace_id now.
  • DBM correlation info was missing.
  • Unified Service Tagging info was missing (existed in a totally separate part of the docs).
  • Metrics correlation info was hidden in host metrics documentation--create traces/metrics correlation page with initial info and link to host metrics to improve discoverability.

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  • Ready for merge

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@brett0000FF brett0000FF requested a review from a team as a code owner July 8, 2025 23:28
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github-actions bot commented Jul 8, 2025

📝 Documentation Team Review Required

This pull request requires approval from the @DataDog/documentation team before it can be merged.

Please ensure your changes follow our documentation guidelines and wait for a team member to review and approve your changes.

@brett0000FF brett0000FF added the Do Not Merge Just do not merge this PR :) label Jul 8, 2025
@brett0000FF brett0000FF requested a review from dineshg13 July 9, 2025 00:56
@brett0000FF brett0000FF changed the title Create new OTel Correlation Guide OTel Correlation Guides Jul 14, 2025
@github-actions github-actions bot added the Architecture Everything related to the Doc backend label Jul 14, 2025
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@shanelhuang shanelhuang left a comment

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Looks good to me for the Trace and Metrics correlation page.

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@jade-guiton-dd - Thanks a ton for your detailed review! Super helpful. I've updated the guide and believe I've addressed all of your points. I'd appreciate if you could take another look when you have a moment.

  • Updated the terminology throughout (for example, using "fields" instead of "attributes" where appropriate) and clarified how logging bridges work by converting logs into the OTel data model.
  • Rewrote the "Scrape logs from files" section based on your feedback. It now uses the much more robust approach of manually injecting trace context with a standard JSON logger. Would appreciate your eyes on this update in particular.
  • Defined the required format for trace_id and span_id.
  • Expanded the Datadog Agent section to better explain the reliance on dd.trace_id and the need for manual remapping when not using the OTel Collector.

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Looks good to me on the logs side.

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jade-guiton-dd commented Jul 23, 2025

I like these recommendations (logs through OTLP first, scraping w/ manual context injection second, and not even mentioning using an OTel console exporter), but I'd be interested in feedback from other OTel team members.

@dineshg13 you brought up concerns about performance for OTLP logs vs. scraping; do you think it's worth a mention?

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