Open tracing tools: Overview and critical comparison
Open accessAbstract
Coping with the rapid growing complexity in contemporary software architecture, tracing has become an increasingly critical practice and been adopted widely by software engineers. By adopting tracing tools, practitioners are able to monitor, debug, and optimize distributed software architectures easily. However, with excessive number of valid candidates, researchers and practitioners have a hard time finding and selecting the suitable tracing tools by systematically considering their features and advantages. To such a purpose, this paper aims to provide an overview of popular Open tracing tools via comparison. Herein, we first identified 30 tools in an objective, systematic, and reproducible manner adopting the Systematic Multivocal Literature Review protocol. Then, we characterized each tool looking at the (1) measured features, (2) popularity both in peer-reviewed literature and online media, and (3) benefits and issues. As a result, this paper presents a systematic comparison amongst the selected tracing tools in terms of their features, popularity, benefits and issues. The result mainly shows that each tracing tool provides a unique combination of features with also different pros and cons. The contribution of this paper is to provide the practitioners better understanding of the tracing tools facilitating their adoption.
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Integration of log-based and distributed tracing in microservice architectures is intrusive and requires changes to the application itself.
“Furthermore, integration of log-based and distributed tracing in MSA is intrusive and requires changes to the application itself [12].”
From Toward Context-Aware Anomaly Detection for AIOps in Microservices Using Dynamic Knowledge Graphs (2026) · cites this paper as [12]
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Toward Context-Aware Anomaly Detection for AIOps in Microservices Using Dynamic Knowledge Graphs
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- Authors
- Janes, A., Li, X., & Lenarduzzi, V.
- Affiliations
- Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (IT)
- Tampere University (FI)
- University of Oulu (FI)
- Corresponding author
- Lenarduzzi, Valentina
- Venue
- Journal of Systems and Software
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2023-10
- Volume
- 204
- Pages
- 111793
- ISSN
- 0164-1212 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4382358537
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 3.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Systems and Software (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Tampere University Institutional Repository (Tampere University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Open Research (University of Surrey) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Academy of Finland (MUFANO/349488)
- Ulla Tuomisen Säätiö
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Software System Performance and Reliability
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Keywords
- distributed tracing, software architecture, tool comparison, tool selection, distributed systems monitoring, debugging, performance optimization
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