Span

As explained in Spring AI in Action

A span is a timed record of one operation or component segment within a distributed trace.

A span is a timed record of one operation or component segment within a distributed trace. Spans show how a request unfolds across application components and external services. section 9.4

A trace for POST /ask contains spans for request handling, ChatClient, vector-store operations, RAG processing, and the model call. Parent spans can contain narrower operations. section 9.4

Inspect spans to understand what an application did:

• Select the /ask trace in Jaeger and inspect its span hierarchy. section 9.4
• Expand span tags to identify a vector-store query’s purpose, such as retrieving conversation history. section 9.4
• Compare multiple spans to explain why one question produced two Qdrant queries and two adds. section 9.4

Figure 9.11 Inspecting the tags for a Qdrant query span

Inspecting the tags for a Qdrant query span demonstrates how span metadata reveals an operation’s purpose. section 9.4

How Spring AI in Action covers it

How deep it goes

Examines nested operations and span tags for diagnosis, but does not detail span creation or trace internals.

Examples

Uses the POST /ask trace, Qdrant query and add spans, RAG processing, and GPT-4o-mini calls.

What you can do after

Diagnose request behavior with Jaeger by inspecting span hierarchies and tags.

How it connects

Connects distributed traces with Jaeger, observability, vector stores, RAG, and model calls.

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Also explained in

• 

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  Troubleshooting Java, Second EditionA span is a recorded unit of work within a distributed trace, including its operation, timing, service, and associated metadata.
• 

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  Cloud Observability in ActionA span is a timed record of an individual operation or service segment within a distributed trace.
• 

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  Quarkus in ActionA span is a recorded unit of work within a trace, such as a method invocation, database invocation, or remote request.
• 

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  Secure APIsA span is a recorded unit of work representing a step in the processing of a request or operation.
• 

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  gRPC Microservices in GoA span is a timed record of one operation within a distributed trace, including its metadata and relationships to other operations.

Compare how 6 books explain span →

Related concepts

• trajectorypart of · A trajectory is an ordered sequence of states, actions, events, or operations that records or describes progression through successive steps or over time.
• root spanincludes · A root span is the top-level span in a trace that represents the start or overall scope of an operation and may have child spans.
• OpenTelemetryproduced by · OpenTelemetry is an open, vendor-neutral observability standard and framework for instrumenting software and generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry such as traces, metrics, and logs.
• child spanincludes · A child span is a trace span representing a sub-operation nested beneath a parent span in a distributed trace.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Spring AI in Action. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.