Custom Instrumentation of Java Applications with the OpenTelemetry API

If your code is custom instrumented with the OpenTelemetry (OTel) API, you can configure it to generate Datadog-style spans and traces to be processed by the Datadog tracing library for your language, and send those to Datadog.

The Datadog tracing library, when configured as described here, accepts the spans and traces generated by OpenTelemetry-instrumented code, processes the telemetry, and sends it to Datadog. You can use this approach, for example, if your code has already been instrumented with the OpenTelemetry API, or if you want to instrument using the OpenTelemetry API, and you want to gain the benefits of using the Datadog tracing libraries without changing your code.

If you’re looking for a way to instrument your code with OpenTelemetry and then send span data to Datadog without going through the Datadog tracing library, see OpenTelemetry in Datadog.

Requirements and limitations

• Datadog Java tracing library dd-trace-java version 1.10.0 or greater.

The following OpenTelemetry features implemented in the Datadog library as noted:

Configuring OpenTelemetry to use the Datadog tracing library

1. Add your desired manual OpenTelemetry instrumentation to your Java code following the OpenTelemetry Java Manual Instrumentation documentation.
2. Add the Datadog tracing library to the JVM.
3. Set the dd.trace.otel.enabled system property to true.

Datadog combines these OpenTelemetry spans with other Datadog APM spans into a single trace of your application.

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

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