Skip to content

Commit ec135dd

Browse files
committed
fix CHANGELOG.md
1 parent 8c5af06 commit ec135dd

File tree

1 file changed

+12
-0
lines changed

1 file changed

+12
-0
lines changed

specification/protocol/file-exporter.md

Lines changed: 12 additions & 0 deletions
Original file line numberDiff line numberDiff line change
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ Currently, it only describes the serialization of OpenTelemetry data to the OTLP
1313

1414
## Table of Contents
1515

16+
- [Use Cases](#use-cases)
1617
- [Exporter configuration](#exporter-configuration)
1718
- [Programmatic configuration](#programmatic-configuration)
1819
- [JSON File serialization](#json-file-serialization)
@@ -22,6 +23,17 @@ Currently, it only describes the serialization of OpenTelemetry data to the OTLP
2223
- [Telemetry data requirements](#telemetry-data-requirements)
2324
- [Examples](#examples)
2425

26+
## Use Cases
27+
28+
Why do we need a file exporter - why not just use the OTLP exporter?
29+
30+
- *Faas*: In a FaaS environment, the OTLP exporter may not be able to send data to a collector.
31+
- *Consistent log scraping from pods*: In a Kubernetes environment, logs are often scraped from the stdout pod file.
32+
This exporter can be used to write logs to stdout - which makes it easier to integrate with existing log scraping tools.
33+
Existing solutions add metadata, such as the trace ID, to the log line,
34+
which needs manual configuration and is error-prone.
35+
- *Reliability*: Writing to a file is more reliable than sending data over the network.
36+
2537
## Exporter configuration
2638

2739
The metric exporter MUST support the environment variables defined in the

0 commit comments

Comments
 (0)