A request enters an API front end, calls a serverless function, and that function runs a BigQuery query. A support engineer needs to see the time spent in each hop for one request. Which Google Cloud capability provides that view?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A
Cloud Trace collects spans from each service and links them through a shared trace identifier. When every service forwards the trace context on its outgoing requests, the tool draws a timeline showing how long each hop took for that one request. Monitoring shows aggregates rather than individual requests. Logs can be correlated but lack timing breakdowns, and the profiler examines code-level resource use within one process.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Monitoring dashboards show aggregated time series for each service. They can reveal that latency rose, but they cannot follow one request across hops.
- C. Matching log names gathers records from several services, but it does not calculate durations or link entries for one request unless correlation identifiers are present.
- D. Profiler flame graphs show where CPU time goes inside one process. They do not show the path a request takes between separate services.