While information from individual spans can be useful visualized as a list, sometimes valuable information can be accessed through aggregation. To access this information, search spans in the Trace Explorer and display them as timeseries, top lists, or tables.
Trace Explorer search consists of a time range and a search query that combines key:value and full-text search. Choose which dimension to visualize (count of spans, count of unique values, measure of a quantitative dimension), select a time frame, and group the query by one or multiple dimensions.
For example, to find spans from a web store service, with an error status, over the past thirty minutes, create a custom query like service:web-store status:error and set the time range to the Past 30 minutes:
Select a top list view, and group the query by resource to see which specific resources are most affected.
Note: key:value queries do not require that you [declare a facet][1] beforehand.
To begin searching for spans in the Trace Explorer, read the query syntax documentation and the time frame documentation for more details on custom time frames.
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
