Compare of two trace instances showing diff at wrong point

Requirement - what kind of business use case are you trying to solve?

Compare should only show differences as red or green.

Problem - what in Jaeger blocks you from solving the requirement?

Firstly wanted to say that the new compare feature is great. However when trying it out on the Istio bookinfo example I noticed that it is showing a particular node (istio-mixer op: /istio.mixer.v1.Mixer/Check) as being added and removed under the same node - the only difference is that the green version of the node has a child span.

The same issue occurs in multiple places in this particular example - shown twice in this image.

Proposal - what do you suggest to solve the problem or improve the existing situation?

If there is no difference between these nodes, then the compare should only be showing the addition of the child span. If there is a difference between these nodes that results in the green/red distinction, then the difference also needs to be included in the graphical representation, otherwise it is not clear.

Any open questions to address

[tiffon]

I want to note @yurishkuro’s suggestion of showing the options as a series of checkboxes. Enabling a lower-checkbox would automatically enable any checkboxes above. I.E. you cannot have only the first and last checkboxes enabled.

For instance:

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Two spans are in the same group iff:

• They are from the same service
• They have the same service & operation
• They have the same ancestral lineage (by service & operation)
• They are both either parents or leaves
• They have the same set of children (by service & operation)

[yurishkuro]

The current comparison is very ancestor oriented, which can be problematic.

So an interesting interview question - given two compressed trace trees, can we determine through some algorithm if they should be matched at roots or at a subtree of one of them?