What does a trace represent in OpenTelemetry?

A trace in OpenTelemetry represents the complete journey of a single request as it moves through various services within a distributed system. This concept is essential for understanding performance and diagnosing issues in complex applications that rely on microservices. Each trace is composed of a series of spans, which are individual operations or tasks that occur during the request's lifecycle, allowing developers to observe how different components interact and how long each part of the process takes. This detailed representation enables better monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimization of application performance.

The other choices pertain to different aspects of telemetry and data processing but do not specifically define what a trace is within the context of OpenTelemetry.