A checkout request passes through an API gateway, a pricing service, an inventory service and a payment service. Users see slow responses, and you need a timeline for individual requests that shows how long each hop took. Which service should you use?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
Cloud Trace collects latency data for requests as they cross services and displays each request as a timeline of spans. Instrumentation with OpenTelemetry or the Trace SDK propagates the trace context from hop to hop, so you can see which service or downstream call dominates the time. It is built for diagnosing where latency goes.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Logs record events from each service but do not join them into a timed path per request by default. Log-based metrics count entries and cannot show span durations across hops.
- C. Uptime checks test from outside whether an endpoint responds. They confirm availability, not where time is spent inside a multi-hop request.
- D. Error Reporting groups exceptions and stack traces so recurring failures are easy to spot. It does not measure latency or show timing across services.