Support for Open Telemetry histogram type metrics

[gustavokath]

I've been discussing, in this issue, at Dynatrace OpenTelemetry metrics for JS GitHub repository about the some future support for some of the feature now the deprecated repository covered. And I was instructed to seek for further details here in the community.

1. Currently Histograms metrics are not supported by Dynatrace according, is there any plans and timeline to start supporting this? This is main reason why I'm using the lib is the conversion it makes to Dynatrace Gauge for the proprietary API.
2. On this lib there was the possibility to send the metrics to the OneAgent which would send transmit them to the server, avoiding extra costs. Is there the same possibility with the OTLP exporters? Is the OneAgent being enhanced to understand OTLP APIs?

Thanks
Best Regards
Gustavo Kath

[Nick-Montana · Accepted solution]

Hey Gustavo,

I cannot answer the first question as I understand OpenTelemetry is still a work-in-progress.

As for your second question, I think you can assume that any extra custom metrics that you create with Dynatrace Extensions is going to come at a cost (DDUs). I'm assuming you're are referring to the OneAgent Metrics API?

I believe that there is still a cost associated to custom metric ingestion via that OneAgent Metric API but I don't know for certain. 

[Slawa]

Do we have any updates regarding support all Otel metrics types?

https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/signals/metrics/

• Counter: A value that accumulates over time – you can think of this like an odometer on a car; it only ever goes up.
• Asynchronous Counter: Same as the Counter, but is collected once for each export. Could be used if you don’t have access to the continuous increments, but only to the aggregated value.
• UpDownCounter: A value that accumulates over time, but can also go down again. An example could be a queue length, it will increase and decrease with the number of work items in the queue.
• Asynchronous UpDownCounter: Same as the UpDownCounter, but is collected once for each export. Could be used if you don’t have access to the continuous changes, but only to the aggregated value (e.g., current queue size).
• Gauge: Measures a current value at the time it is read. An example would be the fuel gauge in a vehicle. Gauges are asynchronous.
• Histogram: A client-side aggregation of values, such as request latencies. A histogram is a good choice if you are interested in value statistics. For example: How many requests take fewer than 1s?

[KyraHinnegan]

Histogram support was added as of SaaS release 1.300: https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/shortlink/release-notes-saas-sprint-300#opentelemetry-metrics-ingest...