The OpenTelemetry SDK for .NET introduced stable support for exemplars in version 1.9.0. I believe that exemplars are rather unknown to many .NET developers. So, this article aims to give you a brief overview of exemplars and highlight some important specifics you should be aware of. Let’s dive in and see if now is the right time to start using exemplars in your projects.

Exemplars are sample data points that are associated with specific time series in your metrics. They capture the context of the specific measurements - when your application records a value of a metric. This allows you to correlate metric data with the trace that was active when the measurement was taken.

To find out more about Exemplars in .NET, checkout David’s original article on his personal blog.