Span metadata explains what happened during an operation and makes trace data searchable.

Attributes

Attributes are key-value pairs attached to a span or its resource. They describe dimensions such as HTTP method and route, response status, database system, messaging destination, deployment, region, or customer-defined business context.
Use attributes for values that need to be filtered, grouped, or displayed as trace columns. Follow OpenTelemetry semantic conventions when a standard attribute exists. Avoid secrets, personal data, unbounded identifiers, and high-cardinality values unless they are necessary and permitted by your data-governance policy.

Events

Events are timestamped occurrences within a span. They can represent an exception, retry, state transition, cache miss, or other point-in-time activity. Events can have their own attributes and help explain what happened during an operation. Available event details depend on what the application records.

Status

Span status represents the instrumentation’s assessment of the operation outcome. OpenTelemetry commonly uses UNSET, OK, and ERROR, optionally with a status message. OpsRamp also records error indicators and protocol-specific status attributes when supplied.
Status and attributes serve different purposes. An HTTP status code is an attribute describing the response; span status indicates whether the operation should be treated as failed. Instrumentation should set status according to OpenTelemetry conventions rather than marking every non-2xx response as an internal failure without context.
Together, attributes, events, and status allow OpsRamp to filter traces, highlight failures, reconstruct exception context, and compare behavior across services and operations.