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DRIVERS-3705 Document server behavior for propagated trace context #2000

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nhachicha merged 1 commit into from
Oct 27, 2026
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DRIVERS-3705 Document server behavior for propagated trace context #2000

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18 changes: 18 additions & 0 deletions source/open-telemetry/open-telemetry.md
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Expand Up @@ -436,6 +436,20 @@ monitoring, authentication, and security-sensitive commands) naturally send no s

No tracing data is returned in server responses as part of this feature.

##### Expected Server Behavior
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nhachicha marked this conversation as resolved.

This subsection is non-normative: it describes how servers behave, which this specification does not govern.

The server MAY ignore the propagated trace context entirely, for example when tracing is not enabled on the server, in
which case no server spans are created for commands the driver sends. Where tracing is enabled on the server, the server
continues only traces whose `traceparent` marks the trace as sampled, and MAY drop such traces subject to its own rate
limiting, so a sampled driver trace does not guarantee that server spans are produced. The server does not expose the
propagated trace context in its diagnostics: the trace id does not appear in server logs, the profiler, `currentOp`, or
slow-query logs, because the trace context arrives outside the command body.

These behaviors do not affect the requirements above: drivers MUST still propagate the trace context on every eligible
command regardless of the sampling decision or of whether the server acts on it.

## Motivation for Change

A common complaint from our support team is that they don't know how to easily get debugging information from drivers.
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -552,6 +566,10 @@ redesigning the payload format.

## Changelog

- 2026-10-26: Added a non-normative description of expected server behavior for propagated trace context: the server may
ignore it, may continue only sampled traces and may drop them under its own rate limiting, and does not expose it in
server diagnostics such as logs, the profiler, `currentOp`, or slow-query logs.

- 2026-08-19: Specified the `error.type` attribute on command spans, which drivers MUST add when a command fails and
which matches `db.response.status_code` when the command failed with a server error and is otherwise the name of the
exception class associated with that command's failure. Specified that drivers MUST NOT set it when the command
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