What does OpenTelemetry enable applications to do with traces?

OpenTelemetry is a collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs designed to enable observability for applications. One of its primary functions is to facilitate distributed tracing, which allows applications to connect traces along the execution flow. This means that OpenTelemetry can track the progression of a request as it travels across various services in microservices architectures, revealing how each component interacts with others in real time.

By providing context for each trace, OpenTelemetry helps developers understand how different parts of a system work together to fulfill a request. It can help identify bottlenecks and performance issues by visualizing the path that requests take through the system, as well as the time spent in each component. This capability is essential for debugging and optimizing application performance.

Other options, while potentially related to observability, do not reflect the primary function of OpenTelemetry concerning tracing. Linking to user identities pertains more to user analytics rather than tracing functionality, compressing for storage focuses on data management rather than on tracing, and visualizing in real-time is more about presenting data rather than the mechanics of tracking execution flows.