Incomplete Trace Data (OpenTelemetry + Seq)

[RezaBagheri8]

Environment:
.NET 8
ASP.NET Core Web API
OpenTelemetry
Serilog
Seq 2024.1

Current Setup
Here's my OpenTelemetry configuration in Program.cs:

const string serviceName = "app-trader";

builder.Logging.AddOpenTelemetry(options =>
{
    options.SetResourceBuilder(ResourceBuilder
            .CreateDefault()
            .AddService(serviceName))
        .AddConsoleExporter();
});
builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry()
    .ConfigureResource(resource => resource.AddService(serviceName))
    .WithTracing(tracing => tracing
        .AddAspNetCoreInstrumentation()
        .AddEntityFrameworkCoreInstrumentation()
        .AddHttpClientInstrumentation()
        .AddConsoleExporter()
        .AddOtlpExporter(opt =>
        {
            opt.Endpoint = new Uri("http://localhost:5341/ingest/otlp/v1/traces");
            opt.Protocol = OtlpExportProtocol.HttpProtobuf;
        }))
    .WithMetrics(metrics => metrics
        .AddAspNetCoreInstrumentation()
        .AddHttpClientInstrumentation()
        .AddRuntimeInstrumentation()
        .AddConsoleExporter());

Issue:
When monitoring a login request in the Seq dashboard, I notice discrepancies in the timing data:

Total request duration shows ~1000ms
Only 4 database commands are logged, each taking about 20ms
This leaves a significant gap in the trace data (~900ms unaccounted for)

Expected Behavior:
Complete trace data showing all operations within the request
Accurate timing for middleware, business logic, and database operations

Question:
Why is there such a large gap between the total request time and the sum of traced operations?
How can I configure OpenTelemetry to capture more detailed timing data?
Am I missing specific configurations to get more accurate and complete trace information?

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to let me know if you need any more information.

[Kielek]

@RezaBagheri8, it is really hard to say what you can do without understanding what is happening during the login request.
You can start with listing all your library dependencies and comparing them with contrib instrumentation libraries. Then you can add them if needed.
When you have a list, you can try to verify if there is no native support for the OpenTelemetry like in NServiceBus.

Last but not least, you can manually create Spans (Activities) and subscribe to them in you time consuming code.

[RezaBagheri8]

in my login request, i have some queries to my PostgreSQL database (ef core) and generating jwt token
and I added ef core instrumentation package to my configuration as I mentioned

I was looking for an automatic approach that does not need to create Activities manually

[Kielek]

You might try to use https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet-instrumentation - it contains a lot of other, most common, libraries instrumented.

Still, it will not cover your custom code.

[RezaBagheri8]

Thank you for your guidance.