Semantic Conventions for Elasticsearch

Status: Experimental

The Semantic Conventions for Elasticsearch extend and override the Database Semantic Conventions that describe common database operations attributes in addition to the Semantic Conventions described on this page.

db.system MUST be set to "elasticsearch".

Span Name

The span name SHOULD be of the format <endpoint id>.

The elasticsearch endpoint identifier is used instead of the url path in order to reduce the cardinality of the span name, as the path could contain dynamic values. The endpoint id is the name field in the elasticsearch schema. If the endpoint id is not available, the span name SHOULD be the http.request.method.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Requirement Level	Stability
db.operation.name	string	The name of the operation or command being executed. [1]	search; ml.close_job; cat.aliases	Required
http.request.method	string	HTTP request method. [2]	GET; POST; HEAD	Required
url.full	string	Absolute URL describing a network resource according to RFC3986 [3]	https://localhost:9200/index/_search?q=user.id:kimchy	Required
db.elasticsearch.path_parts.<key>	string	A dynamic value in the url path. [4]	db.elasticsearch.path_parts.index=test-index; db.elasticsearch.path_parts.doc_id=123	Conditionally Required when the url has dynamic values
error.type	string	Describes a class of error the operation ended with. [5]	timeout; java.net.UnknownHostException; server_certificate_invalid; 500	Conditionally Required If and only if the operation failed.
server.port	int	Server port number. [6]	80; 8080; 443	Conditionally Required [7]
db.elasticsearch.cluster.name	string	Represents the identifier of an Elasticsearch cluster.	e9106fc68e3044f0b1475b04bf4ffd5f	Recommended [8]
db.elasticsearch.node.name	string	Represents the human-readable identifier of the node/instance to which a request was routed.	instance-0000000001	Recommended [9]
db.query.text	string	The request body for a search-type query, as a json string.	"{\"query\":{\"term\":{\"user.id\":\"kimchy\"}}}"	Recommended [10]
server.address	string	Name of the database host. [11]	example.com; 10.1.2.80; /tmp/my.sock	Recommended

[1]: This SHOULD be the endpoint identifier for the request.

[2]: HTTP request method value SHOULD be “known” to the instrumentation. By default, this convention defines “known” methods as the ones listed in RFC9110 and the PATCH method defined in RFC5789.

If the HTTP request method is not known to instrumentation, it MUST set the http.request.method attribute to _OTHER.

If the HTTP instrumentation could end up converting valid HTTP request methods to _OTHER, then it MUST provide a way to override the list of known HTTP methods. If this override is done via environment variable, then the environment variable MUST be named OTEL_INSTRUMENTATION_HTTP_KNOWN_METHODS and support a comma-separated list of case-sensitive known HTTP methods (this list MUST be a full override of the default known method, it is not a list of known methods in addition to the defaults).

HTTP method names are case-sensitive and http.request.method attribute value MUST match a known HTTP method name exactly. Instrumentations for specific web frameworks that consider HTTP methods to be case insensitive, SHOULD populate a canonical equivalent. Tracing instrumentations that do so, MUST also set http.request.method_original to the original value.

[3]: For network calls, URL usually has scheme://host[:port][path][?query][#fragment] format, where the fragment is not transmitted over HTTP, but if it is known, it SHOULD be included nevertheless. url.full MUST NOT contain credentials passed via URL in form of https://username:password@www.example.com/. In such case username and password SHOULD be redacted and attribute’s value SHOULD be https://REDACTED:REDACTED@www.example.com/. url.full SHOULD capture the absolute URL when it is available (or can be reconstructed). Sensitive content provided in url.full SHOULD be scrubbed when instrumentations can identify it.

[4]: Many Elasticsearch url paths allow dynamic values. These SHOULD be recorded in span attributes in the format db.elasticsearch.path_parts.<key>, where <key> is the url path part name. The implementation SHOULD reference the elasticsearch schema in order to map the path part values to their names.

[5]: The error.type SHOULD match the error code returned by the database or the client library, the canonical name of exception that occurred, or another low-cardinality error identifier. Instrumentations SHOULD document the list of errors they report.

[6]: When observed from the client side, and when communicating through an intermediary, server.port SHOULD represent the server port behind any intermediaries, for example proxies, if it’s available.

[7]: If using a port other than the default port for this DBMS and if server.address is set.

[8]: When communicating with an Elastic Cloud deployment, this should be collected from the “X-Found-Handling-Cluster” HTTP response header.

[9]: When communicating with an Elastic Cloud deployment, this should be collected from the “X-Found-Handling-Instance” HTTP response header.

[10]: Should be collected by default for search-type queries and only if there is sanitization that excludes sensitive information.

[11]: When observed from the client side, and when communicating through an intermediary, server.address SHOULD represent the server address behind any intermediaries, for example proxies, if it’s available.

error.type has the following list of well-known values. If one of them applies, then the respective value MUST be used; otherwise, a custom value MAY be used.

Value	Description	Stability
_OTHER	A fallback error value to be used when the instrumentation doesn’t define a custom value.

http.request.method has the following list of well-known values. If one of them applies, then the respective value MUST be used; otherwise, a custom value MAY be used.

Value	Description	Stability
CONNECT	CONNECT method.
DELETE	DELETE method.
GET	GET method.
HEAD	HEAD method.
OPTIONS	OPTIONS method.
PATCH	PATCH method.
POST	POST method.
PUT	PUT method.
TRACE	TRACE method.
_OTHER	Any HTTP method that the instrumentation has no prior knowledge of.

Example