OpenTelemetry Logging Format

SkyWalking can receive logs exported from OpenTelemetry collector, the data flow is:

graph LR
    B[OpenTelemetry SDK 1]
    C[FluentBit/FluentD, etc.]
    K[Other sources that OpenTelemetry supports ...]
    D[OpenTelemetry Collector]
    E[SkyWalking OAP Server]
    B --> D
    C --> D
    K --> D
    D -- exporter --> E

where the exporter can be one of the following:

OpenTelemetry SkyWalking Exporter. An exporter that transforms the logs to SkyWalking format before sending them to SkyWalking OAP. Read the doc in the aforementioned link for a detailed guide.
OpenTelemetry OTLP Exporter. An exporter that sends the logs to SkyWalking OAP in OTLP format, and SkyWalking OAP is responsible for transforming the data format.

OpenTelemetry OTLP Exporter

By using this exporter, you can send any log data to SkyWalking OAP as long as the data is in OTLP format, no matter where the data is generated.

To enable this exporter, make sure the receiver-otel is enabled and the otlp-logs value is in the receiver-otel/default/enabledHandlers configuration section:

receiver-otel:
  selector: ${SW_OTEL_RECEIVER:default}
  default:
    enabledHandlers: ${SW_OTEL_RECEIVER_ENABLED_HANDLERS:"otlp-metrics,otlp-logs"}

Also, because most of the language SDKs of OpenTelemetry do not support logging feature (yet) or the logging feature is experimental, it’s your responsibility to make sure the reported log data contains the following attributes, otherwise SkyWalking is not able to consume them:

service.name: the name of the service that generates the log data, OpenTelemetry Java SDK (experimental) has this attribute set, if you’re using other SDK or agent, please check the corresponding doc.

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