# OpenTelemetry

Altertable can ingest OpenTelemetry logs and traces into the built-in `opentelemetry` catalog.

Once enabled, telemetry data lives in the same lakehouse namespace as your other catalogs. You can federate it with product analytics, operational data, and business context, then consume it the same way with SQL, dashboards, insights, Grafana, or AI agents.

That means observability questions do not have to stay isolated from business and product data. You can investigate application behavior alongside revenue, customer activity, feature usage, and any other source already available in Altertable.

## Enable OpenTelemetry

Open **Catalogs**, choose **New Catalog**, and enable **OpenTelemetry** for the target environment.

After the catalog is enabled, configure your OpenTelemetry SDK or collector to export logs and traces to Altertable.

## Tables and views

When you enable OpenTelemetry, Altertable creates the catalog tables for you and exposes OTLP/HTTP endpoints that make ingestion easier. Accepted traces and logs are written to normal SQL tables:

| Table                      | Description                                                                          |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `opentelemetry.main.spans` | Trace spans with service, timing, status, attributes, events, and links              |
| `opentelemetry.main.logs`  | Log records with severity, body, trace/span IDs, attributes, and resource attributes |

Altertable does not support OpenTelemetry metrics yet.

## Next pages

- [Ingest data](/docs/ingest-data/opentelemetry.md): Authenticate OpenTelemetry exporters and send logs, traces, and telemetry signals into Altertable for SQL analysis.
- [Query data](/docs/query-data/opentelemetry.md): Query OpenTelemetry logs and traces from Grafana or Altertable Explore, alongside product, operational, and business data.