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OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry

Configure OpenTelemetry SDKs or collectors to send OTLP/HTTP protobuf data to Altertable. Logs and traces are written into the built-in opentelemetry catalog for the target environment.

Goal

Authenticate an OpenTelemetry exporter, send logs or traces to Altertable, and verify the accepted telemetry with SQL.

Prerequisites

  • Enable OpenTelemetry for the target environment.
  • Have access to the target environment’s lakehouse credentials.
  • Configure an OpenTelemetry SDK or collector that supports OTLP over HTTP with protobuf encoding.

Altertable accepts logs and traces. Metrics are not supported yet.

Steps

1. Configure authentication

OpenTelemetry uses HTTP Basic Auth with your environment’s lakehouse credentials. Copy this header into your SDK or collector configuration:

Authorization: Basic YOUR_BASE64_TOKEN

The token is already Base64-encoded. If your exporter has separate header name and value fields, use Authorization as the name and Basic <token> as the value.

See Authentication to use a username and password or learn how the header is built.

2. Choose a signal

  • Send logs to POST https://api.altertable.ai/v1/logs.
  • Send traces to POST https://api.altertable.ai/v1/traces.

3. Export telemetry

Configure your SDK or collector with the selected endpoint, Content-Type: application/x-protobuf, and the Basic Auth header. Start the instrumented application or collector to send a batch.

Verification

Query the table for the signal you sent:

SELECT * FROM opentelemetry.main.logs LIMIT 10;
SELECT * FROM opentelemetry.main.spans LIMIT 10;

Run only the relevant statement if you configured one signal. Confirm that the returned service and telemetry fields match the application or collector that sent the batch.

Troubleshooting

  • The exporter receives an authentication error: rebuild the Basic Auth header with credentials from the same environment as the OpenTelemetry catalog.
  • No rows appear: confirm that the exporter uses OTLP/HTTP protobuf, the correct signal endpoint, and Content-Type: application/x-protobuf.
  • Metrics fail to export: send logs or traces instead; Altertable does not support OpenTelemetry metrics yet.
  • Telemetry is in the wrong environment: update the exporter credentials to those of the intended environment.

Next steps

AuthenticationAuthenticate OpenTelemetry OTLP requests to Altertable with Lakehouse HTTP Basic Auth credentials for logs and traces ingestion.LogsSend OpenTelemetry logs to Altertable through the OTLP HTTP logs endpoint and analyze application telemetry with SQL.TracesSend OpenTelemetry traces to Altertable through the OTLP HTTP traces endpoint and analyze spans with SQL workflows.MetricsOpenTelemetry metrics ingestion is not supported yet; learn what Altertable currently accepts and how to send logs and traces instead.