Read a trace yourself

You’ve seen how you reach a trace view. Now open a real trace and read its span waterfall yourself.

The hands-on path below runs on the public play.grafana.org demo, so you need no account and no setup. It lands you on a real trace with a ready-made query, then walks you through reading its span waterfall: the shape, the parent and child nesting, the durations, and the service and operation names. You open a span for its attributes, then compare a healthy request with a failed one to see how a trace’s shape alone can tell you what happened.

Learning path

Read a trace

Open a real trace with live demo data and learn to read its span waterfall (nesting, durations, and attributes) with no account or setup.

15 min

Beginner

Docs & blog posts

Open in Grafana Cloud

Complete this learning path directly in your Grafana Cloud stack, or in the Grafana Play stack, with an interactive learning experience.

Open in Grafana Cloud Try in Grafana Play

View on website

When you finish, you have the core skill, and it transfers to any trace on any surface. Two next steps build on that skill: a query language for finding specific traces on purpose, and connecting a trace to your other signals. The next two slides cover each one.

Now it’s your turn. Open a real trace on the public demo and read it yourself.

You’ll find your way around the waterfall, follow the nesting to see which call ran inside which, and read the durations to see where the request spent its time. There’s no account, no setup, and no query to write; a ready-made one lands you on a good trace to read.

Work through the path at your own pace. When you’re done, that’s the core skill, and it transfers to any trace on any surface. Two next steps build on that skill: a query language for finding specific traces on purpose, and connecting a trace to your other signals. The next two slides cover each one.

Read a trace yourself