trace
trace
Open the distributed-trace waterfall for a trace id directly from the search bar.
Description
The trace command is a command-page: it paints the trace-waterfall surface for the given trace id — the time-ordered span hierarchy of a single distributed request — sourced from OpenTelemetry spans (otel_spans).
Like asset, tree, and cloud, it is a page directive and short-circuits: no ClickHouse scan is issued and any search expression before it is ignored. The page fetches the trace's spans directly.
Syntax
| trace <id>Arguments
id (required)
Syntax: trace <id>
Description: The trace id to open (hex). Typically copied from a span, an exemplar on the service page, or a search result.
What the page shows
- Waterfall: every span in the trace, ordered by start time and nested by parent/child, with per-span duration bars
- Span detail: name, service, kind, status, and timing for each span
- The critical path and where latency accumulates across services
Examples
Open a trace by id
| trace 7b3a9c1d2e4f5a6b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5dUsage Notes
Terminal command: trace must be the final command in the pipeline.
No scan: the command does not read the logs table; it opens the curated waterfall, which fetches the trace's spans directly.
Requires OTLP data: populated from ingested OpenTelemetry spans. An unknown id renders an empty waterfall.