The Definitions tab in your dataset settings allows you to tell Honeycomb which fields in your dataset have special meaning. Honeycomb will use these definitions to provide you with more meaningful visualizations of your data. There are two parts of Honeycomb where we use these: Tracing and Home.
Some fields are required for the construction of a trace waterfall, while others are optional and allow us to visualize your data in a different way.
There is a table showing the meanings of each tracing field; and a second with the meanings of span annotation fields for span events and link events.
The unique ID for each span.
The ID of the trace this span belongs to.
The ID of this span’s parent span, the call location the current span was called from.
The name of the function or method where the span was created.
The name of the instrumented service.
How much time the span took, in milliseconds.
A tag specifying the kind of span, for example root or child.
This field is optional.
Note: this field was previously used to specify annotation types. This usage is deprecated: Deprecation Notice
A tag specifying the type of Span Annotation.
Accepted values are: span_event, link.
Only required if you are using one or both of the Span Event or Trace Link annotation features.
For most cases, this field is not required.
This lets Honeycomb move Span Annotations from the trace waterfall to the trace sidebar, where they are easier to find and access.
Do not use this field for other purposes than specifying the type of Span Annotation.
Learn more about Span Annotations
The Link Span Id lets you link to a different span (when used with Link Trace ID).
The Link Trace Id lets you link to a different trace or a different span in the same trace (when used with Link Span ID).
Honeycomb will visualize some data on Home without any of these definitions being set. However, when you set the definitions for your fields, we are able to show you even more visualizations. Some of these fields overlap with the tracing fields.
A Boolean or String indicating an error.
This field can be a derived column.
If you use a string, any value except for "", " ", and "false" will be considered an error.
Indicates the success, failure, or other status of a request. This field can be a string, integer, float or derived column. Read more about http status codes here.
The ID of this span’s parent span, the call location the current span was called from. On Home, if you have this field configured (and thus a tracing schema configured), we try to show you just the root spans of your traces.
The HTTP URL or equivalent route processed by the request. This field can be a derived column.
The name of the instrumented service.
How much time the span took, in milliseconds.
The ID, name, email address (or another unique identifier) of the user making the request in the system. This field can be a string, integer, float, or derived column.
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