Configure an exporter

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

Goal

Authenticate an OpenTelemetry exporter, send logs, traces, or metrics 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 or JSON encoding.

SDK and collector setup

Use the OpenTelemetry SDK for your application language or an existing collector with an OTLP/HTTP exporter. Configure instrumentation, batching, and resource attributes in the SDK or collector, then use the credentials and endpoints below.

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.

If the exporter provides separate username and password fields for Basic Auth, use the lakehouse credentials from API keys & credentials in organization settings. Use credentials from the environment that owns the OpenTelemetry catalog.

To build the header yourself, Base64-encode username:password and prefix the result with Basic followed by a space. The OpenTelemetry API reference defines the authentication header and request format.

2. Choose a signal

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

3. Export telemetry

Configure your SDK or collector with the selected endpoint, the content type matching its encoding (application/x-protobuf or application/json), 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 ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 10;

SELECT * FROM opentelemetry.main.spans ORDER BY start_time DESC LIMIT 10;

SELECT * FROM opentelemetry.main.metrics ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 10;

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, the correct signal endpoint, and a content type matching its payload.
• Telemetry is in the wrong environment: update the exporter credentials to those of the intended environment.

Next steps