In software engineering, more specifically in distributed computing, observability is the ability to collect data about programs' execution, modules' internal states, and the communication among components.[1][2] To improve observability, software engineers use a wide range of logging and tracing techniques to gather telemetry information, and tools to analyze and use it. Observability is foundational to site reliability engineering, as it is the first step in triaging a service outage. One of the goals of observability is to minimize the amount of prior knowledge needed to debug an issue.
- ^ Fellows, Geoff (1998). "High-Performance Client/Server: A Guide to Building and Managing Robust Distributed Systems". Internet Research. 8 (5). doi:10.1108/intr.1998.17208eaf.007. ISSN 1066-2243.
- ^ Cantrill, Bryan (2006). "Hidden in Plain Sight: Improvements in the observability of software can help you diagnose your most crippling performance problems". Queue. 4 (1): 26–36. doi:10.1145/1117389.1117401. ISSN 1542-7730. S2CID 14505819.