Practice distributed tracing vocabulary: traces, spans, context propagation, instrumentation, and tools like Jaeger, Zipkin, and Grafana Tempo.
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What is a 'trace' in distributed tracing?
A trace represents the entire lifecycle of a single request as it travels through multiple services. It's composed of spans — each representing a single operation within the request's path.
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'The ___ for the DB query took 280ms.' Which noun represents a single operation within a trace?
A 'span' represents a named, timed operation within a trace. Each span has a start time, duration, and metadata (tags/attributes). Multiple spans make up a trace.
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What is 'context propagation' in distributed tracing?
Context propagation means forwarding trace context (trace ID, span ID, sampling flags) in request headers (like W3C traceparent) so downstream services can attach their spans to the same trace.
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'We added ___ to the new service.' What is added to enable tracing?
'Instrumentation' is the code (or auto-instrumented library) that creates spans, sets attributes, and propagates context. Adding instrumentation to a service makes it visible in distributed traces.
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Which three tools are commonly used for distributed tracing backends?
Jaeger (CNCF), Zipkin (open source, Twitter origin), and Grafana Tempo are the most common open-source distributed tracing backends. They store and visualize trace data collected via OpenTelemetry or native SDKs.