Clarify usage of producer span kind #4758
Description
What are you trying to achieve?
Trying to identify span kind which should be used for a span which adds a task to be performed at a later time within the same application.
Additional context.
When I look at https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/trace/api/#spankind
When I read
SpanKind describes two independent properties that benefit tracing systems during analysis:
- Whether a span represents an outgoing call to a remote service (CLIENT and PRODUCER spans) or a processing of an incoming request initiated externally (SERVER and CONSUMER spans).
- Whether a Span represents a request/response operation (CLIENT and SERVER spans) or a deferred execution (PRODUCER and CONSUMER spans).
That gives me the impression that it is internal especially given no remote/external service.
However when I read
PRODUCER indicates that the span describes the initiation or scheduling of a local or remote operation. This initiating span often ends before the correlated CONSUMER span, possibly even before the CONSUMER span starts.
The mentioning of local can be a source of confusion as it could be local within the same process.
Then reading on I see
INTERNAL Default value. Indicates that the span represents an internal operation within an application, as opposed to an operations with remote parents or children.
Which matches the initial understanding.
As such a suggestion would be to make local more explicit by adding in brackets "seperate process". Or something similar.
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