Instrumenting a Flask App with OpenTelemetry for Traces
The article discusses the use of OpenTelemetry to instrument a Flask app for traces. OpenTelemetry is a set of tools, APIs, and SDKs used to instrument applications and create and manage telemetry data. The article highlights the challenges of instrumenting a distributed application architecture and the benefits of using OpenTelemetry, such as its vendor-agnostic nature and ability to export data in multiple formats. It introduces SigNoz as a backend for analyzing, storing, and visualizing telemetry data. The article provides step-by-step instructions on running a Flask application with OpenTelemetry and installing SigNoz. It also explains how to capture data with OpenTelemetry by configuring environment variables and running the app with OpenTelemetry packages. The article concludes with instructions on instrumenting the Flask application with OpenTelemetry Python instrumentation. This tutorial is relevant for developers interested in implementing observability and tracing in their Flask applications.