How to distinguish between collecting system status data and tracking operation execution, and why is it important?

Data collection about system state (metrics) and operation tracking (tracing) are different approaches to monitoring that complement each other:

• System state data collection (metrics): quantitative indicators, such as CPU load, memory usage, request count per second. Metrics provide an overall view of system health and performance over time.

• Operation tracking (tracing): detailed logs or traces of individual requests or transactions, allowing understanding of how exactly an operation is performed, where delays or errors occur.

Why it’s important to distinguish:

• Metrics help quickly detect problems (e.g., response time increase).
• Tracing helps understand the cause of problems, identify bottlenecks, and errors in specific operations.

Thus, combined use of metrics and traces ensures effective system monitoring and diagnostics.