Monitor database/sql with OpenTelemetry
database/sql package provides a lightweight and idiomatic interface to row-oriented databases. It supports most popular relational DBMS via 3-rd party drivers.
This article will teach you how to monitor database/sql performance using OpenTelemetry observability framework.
What is OpenTelemetry?
OpenTelemetry is a vendor-neutral standard that allows you to collect and export traces, logs, and metrics.
OpenTelemetry is a community-driven open source project that offers several components:
OpenTelemetry API is a programming interface that you can use to instrument code and collect telemetry data.
OpenTelemetry SDK is the official implementation of OpenTelemetry API that processes and exports collected telemetry to backends.
OpenTelemetry Collector is a proxy between your application and a backend. It receives telemetry data, transforms and exports it to backends that can store it permanently. Collector can also act as an agent that pulls telemetry data from monitored systems, for example, Redis or host metrics.
OpenTelemetry API and SDK are available for most programming languages and allows to send telemetry data to any tracing tool of your choice.
Installation
To install database/sql OpenTelemetry instrumentation:
go get github.com/uptrace/opentelemetry-go-extra/otelsql
Usage
To instrument database/sql, you need to connect to a database using the API provided by otelsql:
| sql | otelsql |
|---|---|
sql.Open(driverName, dsn) | otelsql.Open(driverName, dsn) |
sql.OpenDB(connector) | otelsql.OpenDB(connector) |
import (
"github.com/uptrace/opentelemetry-go-extra/otelsql"
semconv "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/semconv/v1.4.0"
)
db, err := otelsql.Open("sqlite", "file::memory:?cache=shared",
otelsql.WithAttributes(semconv.DBSystemSqlite),
otelsql.WithDBName("mydb"))
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// db is *sql.DB
And then use context-aware API to propagate the active span via context:
var num int
if err := db.QueryRowContext(ctx, "SELECT 42").Scan(&num); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
What is Uptrace?
Once your app is instrumented, you need a backend platform to store observability data collected by OpenTelemetry.
Uptrace is an open source APM for OpenTelemetry that helps developers pinpoint failures and find performance bottlenecks. Uptrace can process billions of spans on a single server and allows to monitor your software at 10x lower cost.
You can get started with Uptrace by downloading a DEB/RPM package or a pre-compiled Go binary.
What's next?
Next, instrument more operations, for example, database queries, errors, and logs. You can also learn about OpenTelemetry Go Tracing API to create your own instrumentations.
Popular instrumentations:
See also:
