Observing Postgres in action using OpenTelemetry

While debugging in development, or troubleshooting in production, we need to monitor the conditions and behavior of the various components in our systems. One of those components is the database server. We need to look inside the black box that is our database server. Much progress has been made in instrumenting, generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry data (metrics, logs, and traces) to help us analyze our software systems’ performance and behavior. While various proprietary and open-source products have advanced this field of observability, the industry has recognized the need to create a single collection of APIs, SDKs, and tools that can work in a vendor-neutral manner across the many implementations. The open-source community-driven project OpenTelementry is that solution. Now Postgres has gained support for OpenTelemetry. Let's look at how observability works, and how Postgres uses OpenTelemetry to provide the operations data that DBAs, SysAdmins, and developers need.