What differentiates Distributed Tracing from standard tracing?

Distributed Tracing is designed to track the flow of requests through multiple services in a microservices architecture. It achieves this by combining traces from different services into a cohesive, visual representation, allowing developers to understand how requests traverse through the entire system. This is particularly valuable in complex applications where requests often span several services, as it helps identify bottlenecks, latency issues, and error sources across the distributed system.

By creating a single graph that integrates various service traces, Distributed Tracing provides insights that are not accessible through standard tracing methods, which typically focus on a single thread or process. This ability to visualize inter-service interactions is crucial for maintaining performance and reliability in a distributed system.