What the source knows about a retained span's parent (M98g).
observed — the parent span was itself retained by this collector in the
same process, so the relationship is locally evidenced.
remote-or-unobserved — a valid parent span context was carried, but the
parent span is not retained here: a remote parent (propagated
traceparent), an unsampled parent, or one already evicted from the ring.
root — the span carried no parent context.
unknown — a parent context was present but its span id was not a valid
W3C identifier, so nothing can be said.
Visibility is decided when the CHILD completes. A child usually completes
before its parent (a request span outlives the enqueue it performs), so a
local parent that has not yet ended reports remote-or-unobserved, while a
parent that ended first — an enqueue before its job is processed — reports
observed. Join on parentSpanId across a batch, not on this value.
A parent is an IDENTIFIER relationship only: no edge is fabricated when
the referenced span is absent, and capture order is arrival order at this
process — never global start order.
What the source knows about a retained span's parent (M98g).
observed— the parent span was itself retained by this collector in the same process, so the relationship is locally evidenced.remote-or-unobserved— a valid parent span context was carried, but the parent span is not retained here: a remote parent (propagatedtraceparent), an unsampled parent, or one already evicted from the ring.root— the span carried no parent context.unknown— a parent context was present but its span id was not a valid W3C identifier, so nothing can be said.Visibility is decided when the CHILD completes. A child usually completes before its parent (a request span outlives the enqueue it performs), so a local parent that has not yet ended reports
remote-or-unobserved, while a parent that ended first — an enqueue before its job is processed — reportsobserved. Join onparentSpanIdacross a batch, not on this value.A parent is an IDENTIFIER relationship only: no edge is fabricated when the referenced span is absent, and capture order is arrival order at this process — never global start order.