otelsql

It is an OpenTelemetry instrumentation for Golang database/sql, a port from open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib#505.

It instruments traces and metrics.

Install

$ go get github.com/XSAM/otelsql

Usage

This project provides four different ways to instrument database/sql:

otelsql.Open, otelsql.OpenDB, otesql.Register and otelsql.WrapDriver.

And then use otelsql.RegisterDBStatsMetrics to instrument sql.DBStats with metrics.

db, err := otelsql.Open("mysql", mysqlDSN, otelsql.WithAttributes(
	semconv.DBSystemMySQL,
))
if err != nil {
	panic(err)
}
defer db.Close()

err = otelsql.RegisterDBStatsMetrics(db, otelsql.WithAttributes(
	semconv.DBSystemMySQL,
))
if err != nil {
	panic(err)
}

Check Option for more features like adding context propagation to SQL queries when enabling WithSQLCommenter.

See godoc for details.

Blog

Getting started with otelsql, the OpenTelemetry instrumentation for Go SQL, is a blog post that explains how to use otelsql in miutes.

Examples

This project provides two docker-compose examples to show how to use it.

• The stdout example is a simple example to show how to use it with a MySQL database. It prints the trace data to stdout and serves metrics data via prometheus client.
• The otel-collector example is a more complex example to show how to use it with a MySQL database and an OpenTelemetry Collector. It sends the trace data and metrics data to an OpenTelemetry Collector. Then, it shows data visually on Jaeger and Prometheus servers.

Trace Instruments

It creates spans on corresponding methods.

Use SpanOptions to adjust creation of spans.

Metric Instruments

Two types of metrics are provided depending on the semantic convention stability setting:

Legacy Metrics (default)

• db.sql.latency: The latency of calls in milliseconds
  • Unit: milliseconds
  • Attributes: method (method name), status (ok, error)

OpenTelemetry Semantic Convention Metrics

• db.client.operation.duration: Duration of database client operations
  • Unit: seconds
  • Attributes: db.operation.name (method name), error.type (if error occurs)

Connection Statistics Metrics (from Go's sql.DBStats)

• db.sql.connection.max_open: Maximum number of open connections to the database
• db.sql.connection.open: The number of established connections
  • Attributes: status (idle, inuse)
• db.sql.connection.wait: The total number of connections waited for
• db.sql.connection.wait_duration: The total time blocked waiting for a new connection (ms)
• db.sql.connection.closed_max_idle: The total number of connections closed due to SetMaxIdleConns
• db.sql.connection.closed_max_idle_time: The total number of connections closed due to SetConnMaxIdleTime
• db.sql.connection.closed_max_lifetime: The total number of connections closed due to SetConnMaxLifetime

Metric Semantic Convention Stability

The instrumentation supports different OpenTelemetry semantic convention stability levels, configured through the OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN environment variable:

Setting	Metrics Emitted	Description
empty (default)	db.sql.latency only	Only uses legacy metric
database/dup	Both db.sql.latency and db.client.operation.duration	Emits both legacy and new OTel metric formats
database	db.client.operation.duration only	Only uses the new OTel semantic convention metric

Connection statistics metrics (db.sql.connection.*) are always emitted regardless of the stability setting.

This allows users to gradually migrate to the new OpenTelemetry semantic conventions while maintaining backward compatibility with existing dashboards and alerts.

Error Type Attribution

When errors occur during database operations, the error.type attribute is automatically populated with the type of the error. This provides more detailed information for debugging and monitoring:

1. For standard driver errors: Special handling for common driver errors:

   • database/sql/driver.ErrBadConn
   • database/sql/driver.ErrSkip
   • database/sql/driver.ErrRemoveArgument

2. For custom errors: The fully qualified type name is used (e.g., github.com/your/package.CustomError).

3. For built-in errors: The type name is used (e.g., *errors.errorString for errors created with errors.New()).

Note: The error.type attribute is only available when using the new stable OpenTelemetry semantic convention metrics. This requires setting OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN to either database/dup or database. With the default setting (empty), which only uses legacy metrics, the error.type attribute will not be populated.

Compatibility

This project is tested on the following systems.

OS	Go Version	Architecture
Ubuntu	1.24	amd64
Ubuntu	1.23	amd64
Ubuntu	1.24	386
Ubuntu	1.23	386
MacOS	1.24	amd64
MacOS	1.23	amd64
Windows	1.24	amd64
Windows	1.23	amd64
Windows	1.24	386
Windows	1.23	386

While this project should work for other systems, no compatibility guarantees are made for those systems currently.

The project follows the Release Policy to support major Go releases.

Why port this?

Based on this comment, OpenTelemetry SIG team like to see broader usage and community consensus on an approach before they commit to the level of support that would be required of a package in contrib. But it is painful for users without a stable version, and they have to use replacement in go.mod to use this instrumentation.

Therefore, I host this module independently for convenience and make improvements based on users' feedback.

Communication

I use GitHub discussions/issues for most communications. Feel free to contact me on CNCF slack.