Semantic conventions for FaaS spans
Status: Experimental
This document defines how to describe an instance of a function that runs without provisioning or managing of servers (also known as serverless functions or Function as a Service (FaaS)) with spans.
See also the additional instructions for instrumenting AWS Lambda.
General Attributes
Span name should be set to the function name being executed. Depending on the value of the faas.trigger attribute, additional attributes MUST be set. For example, an http trigger SHOULD follow the HTTP Server semantic conventions. For more information, refer to the Function Trigger Type section.
If Spans following this convention are produced, a Resource of type faas MUST exist following the Resource semantic convention.
| Attribute | Type | Description | Examples | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
faas.trigger |
string | Type of the trigger which caused this function execution. [1] | datasource |
No |
faas.execution |
string | The execution ID of the current function execution. | af9d5aa4-a685-4c5f-a22b-444f80b3cc28 |
No |
[1]: For the server/consumer span on the incoming side,
faas.trigger MUST be set.
Clients invoking FaaS instances usually cannot set faas.trigger,
since they would typically need to look in the payload to determine
the event type. If clients set it, it should be the same as the
trigger that corresponding incoming would have (i.e., this has
nothing to do with the underlying transport used to make the API
call to invoke the lambda, which is often HTTP).
faas.trigger MUST be one of the following:
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
datasource |
A response to some data source operation such as a database or filesystem read/write. |
http |
To provide an answer to an inbound HTTP request |
pubsub |
A function is set to be executed when messages are sent to a messaging system. |
timer |
A function is scheduled to be executed regularly. |
other |
If none of the others apply |
Function Name
There are 2 locations where the function’s name can be recorded: the span name and the
faas.name Resource attribute.
It is guaranteed that if faas.name attribute is present it will contain the
function name, since it is defined in the semantic convention strictly for that
purpose. It is also highly likely that Span name will contain the function name
(e.g. for Span displaying purposes), but it is not guaranteed (since it is a
weaker “SHOULD” requirement). Consumers that needs such guarantee can use
faas.name attribute as the source.
Difference between execution and instance
For performance reasons (e.g. AWS lambda, or Azure functions), FaaS providers allocate an execution environment for a single instance of a function that is used to serve multiple requests.
Developers exploit this fact to solve the cold start issue, caching expensive resource computations between different function executions.
Furthermore, FaaS providers encourage this behavior, e.g. Google functions.
This field MAY be set to help correlate function executions that belong to the same execution environment.
The span attribute faas.execution differs from the resource attribute faas.instance in the following:
faas.executionrefers to the current request ID handled by the function;faas.instancerefers to the execution environment ID of the function.
Incoming Invocations
This section describes incoming FaaS invocations as they are reported by the FaaS instance itself.
For incoming FaaS spans, the span kind MUST be Server.
| Attribute | Type | Description | Examples | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
faas.coldstart |
boolean | A boolean that is true if the serverless function is executed for the first time (aka cold-start). | No | |
faas.trigger |
string | Type of the trigger which caused this function execution. [1] | datasource |
Yes |
[1]: For the server/consumer span on the incoming side,
faas.trigger MUST be set.
Clients invoking FaaS instances usually cannot set faas.trigger,
since they would typically need to look in the payload to determine
the event type. If clients set it, it should be the same as the
trigger that corresponding incoming would have (i.e., this has
nothing to do with the underlying transport used to make the API
call to invoke the lambda, which is often HTTP).
Outgoing Invocations
This section describes outgoing FaaS invocations as they are reported by a client calling a FaaS instance.
For outgoing FaaS spans, the span kind MUST be Client.
The values reported by the client for the attributes listed below SHOULD be equal to the corresponding FaaS resource attributes and Cloud resource attributes, which the invoked FaaS instance reports about itself, if it’s instrumented.
| Attribute | Type | Description | Examples | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
faas.invoked_name |
string | The name of the invoked function. [1] | my-function |
Yes |
faas.invoked_provider |
string | The cloud provider of the invoked function. [2] | alibaba_cloud |
Yes |
faas.invoked_region |
string | The cloud region of the invoked function. [3] | eu-central-1 |
Conditional [4] |
[1]: SHOULD be equal to the faas.name resource attribute of the invoked function.
[2]: SHOULD be equal to the cloud.provider resource attribute of the invoked function.
[3]: SHOULD be equal to the cloud.region resource attribute of the invoked function.
[4]: For some cloud providers, like AWS or GCP, the region in which a function is hosted is essential to uniquely identify the function and also part of its endpoint. Since it’s part of the endpoint being called, the region is always known to clients. In these cases, faas.invoked_region MUST be set accordingly. If the region is unknown to the client or not required for identifying the invoked function, setting faas.invoked_region is optional.
faas.invoked_provider MUST be one of the following or, if none of the listed values apply, a custom value:
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
alibaba_cloud |
Alibaba Cloud |
aws |
Amazon Web Services |
azure |
Microsoft Azure |
gcp |
Google Cloud Platform |
tencent_cloud |
Tencent Cloud |
Function Trigger Type
This section describes how to handle the span creation and additional attributes based on the value of the attribute faas.trigger.
Datasource
A datasource function is triggered as a response to some data source operation such as a database or filesystem read/write.
For faas spans with trigger datasource, it is recommended to set the following attributes.
| Attribute | Type | Description | Examples | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
faas.document.collection |
string | The name of the source on which the triggering operation was performed. For example, in Cloud Storage or S3 corresponds to the bucket name, and in Cosmos DB to the database name. | myBucketName; myDbName |
Yes |
faas.document.operation |
string | Describes the type of the operation that was performed on the data. | insert |
Yes |
faas.document.time |
string | A string containing the time when the data was accessed in the ISO 8601 format expressed in UTC. | 2020-01-23T13:47:06Z |
Yes |
faas.document.name |
string | The document name/table subjected to the operation. For example, in Cloud Storage or S3 is the name of the file, and in Cosmos DB the table name. | myFile.txt; myTableName |
No |
faas.document.operation MUST be one of the following or, if none of the listed values apply, a custom value:
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
insert |
When a new object is created. |
edit |
When an object is modified. |
delete |
When an object is deleted. |
HTTP
The function responsibility is to provide an answer to an inbound HTTP request. The faas span SHOULD follow the recommendations described in the HTTP Server semantic conventions.
PubSub
A function is set to be executed when messages are sent to a messaging system.
In this case, multiple messages could be batch and forwarded at once to the same function execution.
Therefore, a different root span of type faas MUST be created for each message processed by the function, following the Messaging systems semantic conventions.
This way, it is possible to correlate each individual message with its execution sender.
Timer
A function is scheduled to be executed regularly. The following additional attributes are recommended.
| Attribute | Type | Description | Examples | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
faas.time |
string | A string containing the function invocation time in the ISO 8601 format expressed in UTC. | 2020-01-23T13:47:06Z |
Yes |
faas.cron |
string | A string containing the schedule period as Cron Expression. | 0/5 * * * ? * |
No |
Other
Function as a Service offers such flexibility that it is not possible to fully cover with semantic conventions.
When a function does not satisfy any of the aforementioned cases, a span MUST set the attribute faas.trigger to "other".
In this case, it is responsibility of the framework or instrumentation library to define the most appropriate attributes.
Example
This example shows the FaaS attributes for a (non-FaaS) process hosted on Google Cloud Platform (Span A with kind Client), which invokes a Lambda function called “my-lambda-function” in Amazon Web Services (Span B with kind Server).
| Attribute Kind | Attribute | Span A (Client, GCP) | Span B (Server, AWS Lambda) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resource | cloud.provider |
"gcp" |
"aws" |
| Resource | cloud.region |
"europe-west3" |
"eu-central-1" |
| Span | faas.invoked_name |
"my-lambda-function" |
n/a |
| Span | faas.invoked_provider |
"aws" |
n/a |
| Span | faas.invoked_region |
"eu-central-1" |
n/a |
| Span | faas.trigger |
n/a | "http" |
| Span | faas.execution |
n/a | "af9d5aa4-a685-4c5f-a22b-444f80b3cc28" |
| Span | faas.coldstart |
n/a | true |
| Resource | faas.name |
n/a | "my-lambda-function" |
| Resource | faas.id |
n/a | "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:123456789012:function:my-lambda-function" |
| Resource | faas.version |
n/a | "semver:2.0.0" |
| Resource | faas.instance |
n/a | "my-lambda-function:instance-0001" |