defining limits for metric measurements

[thompson-tomo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently a pattern which has emerged across the semantic conventions for metrics is that 2 or even 3 of the following metrics are defined

• xyz.limit how much of xyz could be used
• xyz.level how much of xyz is currently being used
• xyz.utilisation the % of xyz which is currently being used

Describe the solution you'd like

As you can see these are all very similar metrics. As such what I would like to see is that when the data points are being aggreated for transmission the limit of the metric is injected into the payload.

This approach would make it easier to visualise metrics as the limit can be plotted against the value, min, max or avg depending on the scenario.

This also reduces data storage as only additional property needs to be stored as opposed to another measurement.

[trask]

@thompson-tomo you may want to check out https://github.com/open-telemetry/otel-arrow/blob/main/docs/multivariate-design.md

[thompson-tomo]

Thanks @trask yes what was mentioned but removed from stage 1 would help but my impression of otap is that it wouldn't stop the calculation/measuring of the limit

[lmolkova]

/cc @lquerel who's working on the proposal.