CNCF-Hosted Co-Located Events Europe 2023

The OpenTelemetry specification for metrics data model recognizes two distinct types of temporality, coming from two different monitoring traditions - cumulative and delta. Despite this, the metrics SDK specification currently opts for using the cumulative temporality as the default, leaving the decision to switch to delta temporality to users. This leaves OpenTelemetry users with an open question - what are the use cases of delta temporality in OpenTelemetry? What are the pros and cons of using one type of temporality over another? And what are the pitfalls?   This talk will take a look at the delta temporality in detail. Matej and Oded will first look at definition of temporalities in the specification and their respective historical backgrounds. Subsequently, the talk will focus on comparing the temporalities, showing when employing delta temporality can be advantageous and what pitfalls users need to heed when working with delta temporality. The talk will also consider the temporality outside of the SDK and will analyze how the OpenTelemetry Collector leverages delta temporality in a number of components.