Technical Glossary
OpenTelemetry Observability
Exact Definition
OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open-source observability framework for collecting, processing, and exporting telemetry data — traces, metrics, and logs — from distributed applications into monitoring backends like Grafana, Datadog, or Jaeger.
Architectural Deep Dive
In complex ERP systems where a single user action triggers 15 database queries across 4 services, OpenTelemetry creates a distributed trace showing the latency contribution of every component. OTel auto-instruments Next.js, Node.js, and PostgreSQL drivers, producing W3C TraceContext-compliant spans without modifying application code. This is the CNCF-standardized successor to proprietary APM agents.
The ERPStack Approach
We instrument all production ERP deployments with OpenTelemetry, exporting traces to Grafana Tempo and metrics to Prometheus for real-time SLA monitoring and database query optimization.