Why both distributed tracing and logging (for backend services)?

Question

I know most observability companies (Datadog, New Relic, Elastic, grafana, ...) will want us to believe that we need *both*. But why?Isn't tracing a superset of logs? Instead of logging won't it be better to add some attributes to traces?I used ddog apm, and GCP stackdriver too. But I believe if I got the query capabilities of stackdriver in ddog, I would have saved few $k's in monthly infra expense.Or am I missing something?

samjohnation111 · Accepted Answer

Both distributed tracing and logging are vital for backend services. Distributed tracing provides a big-picture view of system interactions, helping identify bottlenecks, while logging captures detailed data for issue investigation and system health monitoring. Together, they optimize performance, ensure reliability, and aid in meeting compliance and security requirements.Regards, Sam https://atellier.in