Correlation Vector

Background

Correlation Vector (a.k.a. cV) is a format and protocol standard for tracing and correlation of events through a distributed system based on a light weight vector clock. The standard is widely used internally at Microsoft for first party applications and services and supported across multiple logging libraries and platforms (Services, Clients - Native, Managed, JS, iOS, Android etc). The standard powers a variety of different data processing needs ranging from distributed tracing & debugging to system and business intelligence, in various business organizations.

Goals

• Make the standard specification externally available for implementation by non-Microsoft components or Open Source Microsoft components
• Support wire interop scenarios between Microsoft-internal and external tracing systems
• Describe the benefits of vector based tracing formats and to provide an exemplar vector based format for future standardization efforts with similar protocols

Resources

• Design Constraints and Scenarios for the Correlation Vector: Link
• Protocol Specification:
  • v2.1
  • v3.0 [In Review]
    • Support interop with W3C Distributed Tracing Link
    • Support for vector reset semantics to support traces of arbitrary depth
    • Support for versioning

Reference Implementations

• Cpp C\+\+
• CSharp C\#
• Go
• Java
• JavaScript

Future Roadmap

TBD

Contributing

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