Yes, this is a common confusing point between structured logging and wide event. The Wide Event 101 article I referenced has clear explanation:
> Structured logs could be wide events, but not all structured logs are wide events. A structured log with 5 fields is not a wide event. A structured log with no context is not a wide event.
And these also why it requires no code changes to extract more metrics from wide event. The context can carry enough information and you just write a new query to retrieve it. In current metrics tooling, you will make code change to define new labels or add new metrics for that.
Re:Observability 2.0 and the Database for It
by lnenad on Friday April 25, 2025 @04:44AM
(#43791563)
> And these also why it requires no code changes to extract more metrics from wide event.
I think the point of OP's comment is that while you're not paying code tax for to parse/aggro the data as it's all in one place you're paying code tax for actually generating the event with everything in it.
Sure you still need to code but instead of concrete metrics one by one, you instrument the context and the state. The opentelemetry trace API can save you a lot of work. But I agree there is still potential to improve the auto instrument.
From my perspective, this is just structured logging. It doesn’t cover tracing and metrics, at all.
> This process requires no code changes—metric are derived directly from the raw event data through queries, eliminating the need for pre-aggregation or prior instrumentation.
“requires no code changes”? Well certainly, because by the time you send events like that your code has already bent over backwards to enable them.
Surely I must be missing something.