In this article, Steve Gordon shares his hands-on experiences with OpenTelemetry in ASP.NET Core and demonstrates how to use middleware in .NET 9 to facilitate automatic span (activity) linking for internal redirects.

Article Summary

Steve Gordon continues his series on OpenTelemetry instrumentation in .NET applications by focusing on a recent enhancement involving automatic span (Activity) linking in ASP.NET Core middleware. This approach is aimed at improving observability and distributed tracing, especially when handling internal redirects within web applications.

Background: Observability and Internal Redirects

  • Observability in distributed applications often relies on tracing requests as they move through different components.
  • Internal redirects in ASP.NET Core can create separate trace spans for each request, making it harder to correlate related activities.
  • The solution discussed involves linking the activities (spans) related to these internal redirects to improve end-to-end traceability.

Middleware Implementation

  • Steve introduces a custom middleware in .NET 9 that intercepts requests and automatically links the current activity to the parent activity involved in an internal redirect.
  • The implementation leverages features from .NET 9 and the OpenTelemetry SDK for .NET, particularly for manipulating and linking Activity objects (the underlying representation of trace spans in .NET).

Practical Benefits

  • The automatic linking of spans across internal redirects facilitates more accurate and insightful traces, aiding debugging and performance monitoring.
  • This middleware solution is lightweight and can be integrated into existing ASP.NET Core applications with minimal disruption.
  • It aligns with modern best practices for distributed tracing and supports more effective root cause analysis in complex .NET systems.

Key Takeaways

  • Middleware-based Activity linking improves trace correlation for internal redirects.
  • The approach leverages native .NET 9 and OpenTelemetry APIs.
  • This enhancement supports better observability and operational insights for ASP.NET Core developers focused on distributed architectures.

For more details and code samples, visit the original blog post by Steve Gordon.

This post appeared first on Steve Gordon’s Blog. Read the entire article here