Correlation Tags¶

Correlation tags are an flexible way to link together data in Observe and support pivoting, or correlating, data.

Correlation tags offer the ability to flexibily connect logs, metrics, traces and other data in Observe regardless of the underlying data format.

Benefits of Correlation Tags¶

Correlation Tags offer an easier and more flexible way to link data in Observe compared to Resources.

Correlation Tags have the following benefits:

Can be added via UI without writing OPAL
Can be added to app-installed content
Can be added to nested fields within JSON (ex: attributes.name)
Can be added and removed without triggering re-materialization or an increase transform costs

How to Add a Correlation Tag to a Dataset¶

A correlation tag is a piece of metadata added to a dataset, either automatically by the Observe system or manually by a user. Each correlation tag consists of a name and a path within a dataset, which can either be a column or a nested path within JSON.

Note

Only Observe admins have permissions to add correlation tags to datasets.

Correlation tags can be added to datasets via the Dataset edit page. Below is an example of how to add a correlation tag.

Once a correlation tag is added, users can pivot via the pivot context menu. Using the pivot menu, users can pivot to related logs, metrics, traces.

Log Correlation Using Correlation Tags¶

One powerful use case for correlation tags is Log Correlation.

Observe offers the powerful ability to query across multiple log sources that shared common attributes, such as IDs. In other observability systems, this capability is known as log subqueries.

For example, if two teams submit logs to Observe containing service in two different naming formats, correlation tags can be added to these two fields to ensure that users can run queries across these two log datasets.

Once the same correlation tag is added to two or more datasets, those correlation tags can be used to pivot across the datasets.

See the video below for a primer on how to use Correlation Tags to support Log Correlation.

Linking Logs to Traces or Metrics via Correlation Tags¶

Beyond Log Correlation, Correlation Tags can also be used to link log data to metrics and logs.

Linking Applications Logs to the Service Explorer¶

Our native Service Explorer is a core part of the Observe Application Performance Monitoring offering.

You can now link custom application logs to the Service Explorer by simply adding the service.name correlation tag to a column or path to any log dataset.

Note: you must be on version >=2.2.0 of the OTEL app for this functionality to work.

Automatic Tagging¶

Observe automatically tags data coming from the Observe agent with relevant tags following the Open Telemetry Semantic Convention for resources.