Software Design

Distributed Trace Context Propagation via HTTP

UML Sequence Diagrams · made in Skemio

UML sequence diagram showing W3C traceparent header propagation from User through API Gateway, Order Service, and out-of-band export to Jaeger.
UML sequence diagram showing W3C traceparent header propagation from User through API Gateway, Order Service, and out-of-band export to Jaeger.
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What it shows

  • W3C traceparent headers carry trace ID, parent ID, and sampling flags.
  • Every downstream service generates a new span ID while retaining trace ID.
  • Collector services like Jaeger stitch spans asynchronously via trace ID.

The takeaway

Trace context headers pass the distributed torch; without propagation, spans remain isolated islands.

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