OpenTelemetry Declarative Configuration Reaches Stability Milestone

OpenTelemetry Declarative Configuration Reaches Stability Milestone - InfoQ

[BT](http://www.infoq.com/int/bt/ "bt")

InfoQ Software Architects' Newsletter

A monthly overview of things you need to know as an architect or aspiring architect.

View an example

Enter your e-mail address

Select your country - [x] I consent to InfoQ.com handling my data as explained in this Privacy Notice.

We protect your privacy.

Close

Live Webinar and Q&A: Portable by Design: Data Mobility & Recovery Patterns for Multi-Cloud Systems (May 21, 2026)Save Your Seat

Close

Toggle Navigation

Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

English edition

• English edition
• Chinese edition
• Japanese edition
• French edition

[Write for InfoQ](http://www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq/ "Write for InfoQ")

Search

RegisterSign in

Unlock the full InfoQ experience

Unlock the full InfoQ experience by logging in! Stay updated with your favorite authors and topics, engage with content, and download exclusive resources.

Log In

or

Don't have an InfoQ account?

Register

• Stay updated on topics and peers that matter to youReceive instant alerts on the latest insights and trends.
• Quickly access free resources for continuous learningMinibooks, videos with transcripts, and training materials.
• Save articles and read at anytimeBookmark articles to read whenever youre ready.

Logo - Back to homepage

NewsArticlesPresentationsPodcastsGuides

Topics

[Development](http://www.infoq.com/development/ "Development")

• [Java](http://www.infoq.com/java/ "Java")
• [Kotlin](http://www.infoq.com/kotlin/ "Kotlin")
• [.Net](http://www.infoq.com/dotnet/ ".Net")
• [C#](http://www.infoq.com/c_sharp/ "C#")
• [Swift](http://www.infoq.com/swift/ "Swift")
• [Go](http://www.infoq.com/golang/ "Go")
• [Rust](http://www.infoq.com/rust/ "Rust")
• [JavaScript](http://www.infoq.com/javascript/ "JavaScript")

Featured in Development

• #### Stateful Continuation for AI Agents: Why Transport Layers Now Matter

Agent workflows make transport a first-order concern. Multi-turn, tool-heavy loops amplify overhead that is negligible in single-turn LLM use. Stateful continuation cuts overhead dramatically. Caching context server-side can reduce client-sent data by 80%+ and improve execution time by 15–29% .


All in developmentFollow Topic

[Architecture & Design](http://www.infoq.com/architecture-design/ "Architecture & Design")

• [Architecture](http://www.infoq.com/architecture/ "Architecture")
• [Enterprise Architecture](http://www.infoq.com/enterprise-architecture/ "Enterprise Architecture")
• [Scalability/Performance](http://www.infoq.com/performance-scalability/ "Scalability/Performance")
• [Design](http://www.infoq.com/design/ "Design")
• [Case Studies](http://www.infoq.com/Case_Study/ "Case Studies")
• [Microservices](http://www.infoq.com/microservices/ "Microservices")
• [Service Mesh](http://www.infoq.com/servicemesh/ "Service Mesh")
• [Patterns](http://www.infoq.com/DesignPattern/ "Patterns")
• [Security](http://www.infoq.com/Security/ "Security")

Featured in Architecture & Design

• #### Platform Engineering: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of eBay Velocity

Randy Shoup discusses the "Velocity Initiative," a transformation that doubled engineering productivity and modernized eBay’s DORA metrics. He shares the technical playbook used to scale 4,500 services while explaining why even elite engineering execution can’t save a company hampered by waterfall planning, risk aversion, and a "pathological" culture of fear.


All in architecture-designFollow Topic

[AI Infrastructure](http://www.infoq.com/ai-ml-data-eng/ "AI Infrastructure")

• [Big Data](http://www.infoq.com/bigdata/ "Big Data")
• [Machine Learning](http://www.infoq.com/machinelearning/ "Machine Learning")
• [NoSQL](http://www.infoq.com/nosql/ "NoSQL")
• [Database](http://www.infoq.com/database/ "Database")
• [Data Analytics](http://www.infoq.com/data-analytics/ "Data Analytics")
• [Streaming](http://www.infoq.com/streaming/ "Streaming")

Featured in AI, ML & Data Engineering

• #### Reimagining Platform Engagement with Graph Neural Networks

Mariia Bulycheva discusses the transition from classic deep learning to GNNs for Zalando's landing page. She explains the complexities of converting user logs into heterogeneous graphs, the "message passing" training process, and the technical pitfalls of graph data leakage. She shares how a hybrid architecture solved inference latency, delivering contextual embeddings to a downstream model.


All in ai-ml-data-engFollow Topic

[Culture & Methods](http://www.infoq.com/culture-methods/ "Culture & Methods")

• [Agile](http://www.infoq.com/agile/ "Agile")
• [Diversity](http://www.infoq.com/diversity/ "Diversity")
• [Leadership](http://www.infoq.com/leadership/ "Leadership")
• [Lean/Kanban](http://www.infoq.com/lean/ "Lean/Kanban")
• [Personal Growth](http://www.infoq.com/personal-growth/ "Personal Growth")
• [Scrum](http://www.infoq.com/scrum/ "Scrum")
• [Sociocracy](http://www.infoq.com/sociocracy/ "Sociocracy")
• [Software Craftmanship](http://www.infoq.com/software_craftsmanship/ "Software Craftmanship")
• [Team Collaboration](http://www.infoq.com/team-collaboration/ "Team Collaboration")
• [Testing](http://www.infoq.com/testing/ "Testing")
• [UX](http://www.infoq.com/ux/ "UX")

Featured in Culture & Methods

• #### Empower Your Developers: How Open Source Dependencies Risk Management Can Unlock Innovation

Celine Pypaert discusses the ubiquitous nature of open-source software and shares a blueprint for securing modern applications. She explains how to prioritize high-risk vulnerabilities using exploitability data, the role of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), and the importance of bridging the gap between DevOps and Security through clear accountability and automated governance.


All in culture-methodsFollow Topic

DevOps

• [Infrastructure](http://www.infoq.com/infrastructure/ "Infrastructure")
• [Continuous Delivery](http://www.infoq.com/continuous_delivery/ "Continuous Delivery")
• [Automation](http://www.infoq.com/automation/ "Automation")
• [Containers](http://www.infoq.com/containers/ "Containers")
• [Cloud](http://www.infoq.com/cloud-computing/ "Cloud")
• [Observability](http://www.infoq.com/observability/ "Observability")

Featured in DevOps

• #### Beyond One-Click: Designing an Enterprise-Grade Observability Extension for Docker

Docker Extensions boost developer speed but create a "visibility gap" by isolating telemetry. To meet enterprise needs, extensions must act as bridges to centralized platforms. This article details how to use OpenTelemetry, policy-as-code, and encryption to build secure pipelines. Learn to balance developer productivity with the governance required for scalable, compliant observability.


All in devopsFollow Topic

[Events](https://events.infoq.com/ "Events")

Helpful links

• [About InfoQ](http://www.infoq.com/about-infoq "About InfoQ")
• [InfoQ Editors](http://www.infoq.com/infoq-editors "InfoQ Editors")
• [Write for InfoQ](http://www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq "Write for InfoQ")
• [About C4Media](https://c4media.com/ "About C4Media")
• [Diversity](https://c4media.com/diversity "Diversity")

Choose your language

• [En](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/opentelemetry-declarative-config/# "InfoQ English")
• 中文
• 日本
• Fr


[InfoQ Homepage](http://www.infoq.com/ "InfoQ Homepage")[News](http://www.infoq.com/news "News")OpenTelemetry Declarative Configuration Reaches Stability Milestone

[DevOps](http://www.infoq.com/Devops/ "DevOps")

QCon San Francisco (Nov 16-20): Deep technical sessions. Peer conversations that change how you think.

OpenTelemetry Declarative Configuration Reaches Stability Milestone

Apr 15, 2026 3 min read

by

• Matt Saunders

Follow DevOps, DevEx, Platform Engineering, Fast Flow at Adaptavist

#### Write for InfoQ

Feed your curiosity.Help 550k+ global

senior developers

each month stay ahead.Get in touch

Log in to listen to this article

Loading audio

Your browser does not support the audio element.

0:00 0:00

Normal 1.25x 1.5x

Like

• Reading list

The OpenTelemetry project has announced that key portions of its declarative configuration specification have reached stable status. The observability framework is a vendor-neutral and language-agnostic way to configure telemetry collection. It has been covered recently on InfoQ, with big names such as Airbnb using OpenTelemetry for their high-volume metrics pipeline, and OpenTelemetry publishing a "demystifying" article to broaden adoption.

Jack Berg, a principal engineer at Grafana Labs, documented the changes in a recent blog post. Berg explained that the stabilisation includes the JSON schema for the data model, the YAML representation of configuration files, and the in-memory representation of configuration data.

Declarative config schema is on track to become a crucial cross-language user-facing API for the whole project.

- Jack Berg

The announcement noted that language implementations are now available in five languages. These are C++, Go, Java, JavaScript and PHP. Development work continues for .NET and Python implementations. Berg emphasised that the specification itself reaching stability is the most important step for ensuring a consistent user experience.

Berg explained that one of the biggest benefits of declarative configuration is the ability to define telemetry settings in configuration files rather than environment variables. He pointed out that this method gives a much richer language for specifying options. The new system allows users to define complex telemetry pipelines in a declarative format that can be version-controlled and shared across teams.

Getting all three observability signals configured in a single place has historically been a juggling act of environment variables, programmatic SDK initialisation code, and collector configs. The OpenTelemetry declarative configuration format changes this, by letting users define trace, metric, and log pipelines in a single YAML file that the SDK reads at startup. A practical example shows how users can configure resource attributes, trace providers, metric readers and log processors in a single file format, then point their SDK to the file using the OTEL_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.

/filters:no_upscale()/news/2026/04/opentelemetry-declarative-config/en/resources/2Screenshot%20From%202026-04-15%2023-27-45-1776292541853.png)

A recent Grafana OpenTelemetry community call provided additional perspective on declarative configuration. Marylia Gutierrez, an OpenTelemetry JavaScript approver and core contributor at Grafana Labs, demonstrated how declarative configuration simplifies setup across languages. Gutierrez explained that users had to rely on environment variables before declarative configuration was added, but those could not handle complex configuration needs. The new YAML-based approach provides a more robust structure that lets users define a hierarchical configuration with all settings in one place.

The call included a live demo showing declarative configuration in action with Java. The demonstration showed how users can configure a custom sampler and specify which spans to drop based on attribute patterns. Gutierrez noted that achieving this with environment variables would also require custom code and separate libraries.

The community call also addressed the current language support. According to the compliance matrix shared during the call, Java and PHP are fully compliant with the basic requirements. JavaScript is under active development with more features being added. Go has some capabilities available but documentation is being updated to show how to use them. Python support is still in development.

The discussion also covered remote and dynamic configuration. Gutierrez described this as a future capability where operations teams could push configuration changes to adjust sampling rates or enable additional instrumentation without requiring code changes or redeployment. The vision is that a change to a YAML file could be pushed and picked up by applications without a restart.

OneUptime have also published a detailed guide to using declarative configuration. A tutorial posted on their blog covers the structure of configuration files, including resource attributes, tracer providers, metric readers and logger providers.

Stabilising the schema is the most important thing for a stable user experience.

- Jack Berg

The OpenTelemetry project has indicated that it will keep expanding declarative configuration support. Dynamic configuration, which would allow runtime changes to telemetry settings, is still on the roadmap.

About the Author

#### Matt Saunders

I am VP DevOps at Adaptavist. I help teams use DevOps, platform engineering and cloud-native tools and technologies to deliver reliable quality software quickly and efficiently and with minimal stress. I've worked with complex enterprises, small start-ups, SMEs and everything in between. I also co-organise the London DevOps meetup group, which has over 10,000 members, hosting a hugely popular monthly industry event.

Show more Show less

#### This content is in the DevOps topic

Follow Topic

##### Related Topics:

• DevOps### DevOps

Followers: 5044

Follow Topic

• Declarative Programming### Declarative Programming

Followers: 2

Follow Topic

• Observability### Observability

Followers: 567

Follow Topic

• OpenTelemetry### OpenTelemetry

Followers: 18

Follow Topic

* #### Related Editorial

• ##### Airbnb Migrates High-Volume Metrics Pipeline to OpenTelemetry

• ##### QCon London 2026: Uncorking Queueing Bottlenecks with OpenTelemetry

• ##### OpenTelemetry Project Publishes “Demystifying OpenTelemetry” Guide to Broaden Observability Adoption

• ##### AWS Distributed Tracing Service X-Ray Transitions to OpenTelemetry

• ##### Google Cloud Observability Adopts OpenTelemetry Protocol for Native Trace Ingestion

* #### Related Sponsors

• ##### The Agentic AI SRE built on AWS

• ##### Architecting for What’s Next: Key Software Trends Every Senior Practitioner Must Act On — Download the InfoQ eMag

• ##### Architecture Beyond the Diagram: Decisions, Systems, and the Forces That Shape Them - Download the InfoQ eMag

• ##### [[Webinar] Creating Certainty in the Age of Agentic AI. Watch On-Demand.](http://www.infoq.com/vendorcontent/show.action?vcr=531d8edd-4f74-486b-aaca-10058c609c1c&primaryTopicId=1893&vcrPlace=BOTTOM&pageType=NEWS_PAGE&vcrReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.infoq.com%2Fnews%2F2026%2F04%2Fopentelemetry-declarative-config%2F)

• ##### Designing a Control Plane for Cloud Infrastructure: Governance, State, and Continuous Orchestration (Live Webinar Apr 16th) - Save Your Seat

• #### Related Sponsor

Boost AWS effectiveness with Agentic AI — unify telemetry, reduce noise, and resolve incidents faster. [Learn More](http://www.infoq.com/url/f/964d1561-e323-48c6-9154-f47ca346e3d9/).

Related Content

• ##### Airbnb Migrates High-Volume Metrics Pipeline to OpenTelemetry

Apr 14, 2026

• ##### QCon London 2026: Uncorking Queueing Bottlenecks with OpenTelemetry

Mar 18, 2026

• ##### Pinterest Reduces Spark OOM Failures by 96% through Auto Memory Retries

Apr 06, 2026

• ##### Kubernetes Autoscaling Demands New Observability Focus beyond Vendor Tooling

Mar 31, 2026

• ##### Discord Engineers Add Distributed Tracing to Elixir's Actor Model without Performance Penalty

Mar 28, 2026

• ##### Beyond One-Click: Designing an Enterprise-Grade Observability Extension for Docker

Apr 14, 2026 

• ##### QCon London 2026: Wrangling Telemetry at Scale, a Guide to Self-Hosted Observability

Mar 19, 2026

• ##### Change as Metrics: Measuring System Reliability through Change Delivery Signals

Mar 09, 2026 

• ##### Proactive Autoscaling for Edge Applications in Kubernetes

Feb 17, 2026 

Related Sponsors

• #### Before it Breaks: AI-Driven Azure Incident Response

In this joint Microsoft and NeuBird AIi webinar, you’ll see how agentic AI is transforming Azure incident management from reactive firefighting to proactive, AI-driven resolution. Register Now.

• Sponsored by


Related Content

• ##### From Alert Fatigue to Agent-Assisted Intelligent Observability

Feb 04, 2026 

• Icon##### From Confusion to Clarity: Advanced Observability Strategies for Media Workflows at Netflix

Jan 02, 2026 

• Icon##### From Dashboard Soup to Observability Lasagna: Building Better Layers

Nov 19, 2025 

• Icon##### Scaling API Independence: Mocking, Contract Testing & Observability in Large Microservices Environments

Nov 05, 2025 

• Icon##### Why Observability Matters (More!) with AI Applications

Oct 20, 2025 

• ##### Helidon 4.4.0 Introduces Alignment with OpenJDK Cadence and Support via Java Verified Portfolio

Apr 02, 2026

**The InfoQ** Newsletter

A round-up of last week’s content on InfoQ sent out every Tuesday. Join a community of over 250,000 senior developers. View an example

Enter your e-mail address

Select your country - [x] I consent to InfoQ.com handling my data as explained in this Privacy Notice.

We protect your privacy.

• Development

• ##### [Claude Code Used to Find Remotely Exploitable Linux Kernel Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/claude-code-linux-vulnerability/ "Claude Code Used to Find Remotely Exploitable Linux Kernel Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years")

• ##### [Cloudflare Introduces EmDash: TypeScript CMS Positioned as WordPress Successor](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/cloudflare-emdash-wordpress/ "Cloudflare Introduces EmDash: TypeScript CMS Positioned as WordPress Successor")

• ##### [Stateful Continuation for AI Agents: Why Transport Layers Now Matter](http://www.infoq.com/articles/ai-agent-transport-layer/ "Stateful Continuation for AI Agents: Why Transport Layers Now Matter")

• Architecture & Design

• ##### [Zendesk Says AI Makes Code Abundant, Shifting the Bottleneck to “Absorption Capacity”](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/zendesk-absorption-capacity/ "Zendesk Says AI Makes Code Abundant, Shifting the Bottleneck to “Absorption Capacity”")

• ##### [Platform Engineering: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of eBay Velocity](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/platform-engineering-lessons/ "Platform Engineering: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of eBay Velocity")

• ##### [Lyft Scales Global Localization Using AI and Human-in-the-Loop Review](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/lyft-ai-localization-pipeline/ "Lyft Scales Global Localization Using AI and Human-in-the-Loop Review")

• Culture & Methods

• ##### [Empower Your Developers: How Open Source Dependencies Risk Management Can Unlock Innovation](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/open-source-dependencies/ "Empower Your Developers: How Open Source Dependencies Risk Management Can Unlock Innovation")

• ##### [Tiger Teams, Evals and Agents: The New AI Engineering Playbook](http://www.infoq.com/podcasts/tiger-teams-evals-agents/ "Tiger Teams, Evals and Agents: The New AI Engineering Playbook")

• ##### [Developing Your Leadership Skills toward Principal Engineering](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/leadership-skills/ "Developing Your Leadership Skills toward Principal Engineering")

• AI, ML & Data Engineering

• ##### [Google’s TurboQuant Compression May Support Faster Inference, Same Accuracy on Less Capable Hardware](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/turboquant-compression-kv-cache/ "Google’s TurboQuant Compression May Support Faster Inference, Same Accuracy on Less Capable Hardware")

• ##### [Anthropic Paper Examines Behavioral Impact of Emotion-Like Mechanisms in LLMs](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/anthropic-paper-llms/ "Anthropic Paper Examines Behavioral Impact of Emotion-Like Mechanisms in LLMs")

• ##### [Reimagining Platform Engagement with Graph Neural Networks](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/graph-neural-networks/ "Reimagining Platform Engagement with Graph Neural Networks")

• DevOps

• ##### [OpenTelemetry Declarative Configuration Reaches Stability Milestone](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/opentelemetry-declarative-config/ "OpenTelemetry Declarative Configuration Reaches Stability Milestone")

• ##### [New Rowhammer Attacks on NVIDIA GPUs Enable Full System Takeover](http://www.infoq.com/news/2026/04/rowhammer-attacks-nvidia/ "New Rowhammer Attacks on NVIDIA GPUs Enable Full System Takeover")

• ##### [Beyond One-Click: Designing an Enterprise-Grade Observability Extension for Docker](http://www.infoq.com/articles/enterprise-grade-observability-extension-docker/ "Beyond One-Click: Designing an Enterprise-Grade Observability Extension for Docker")

**The InfoQ** Newsletter

A round-up of last week’s content on InfoQ sent out every Tuesday. Join a community of over 250,000 senior developers. View an example

• Get a quick overview of content published on a variety of innovator and early adopter technologies
• Learn what you don’t know that you don’t know
• Stay up to date with the latest information from the topics you are interested in

Enter your e-mail address

Select your country - [x] I consent to InfoQ.com handling my data as explained in this Privacy Notice.

We protect your privacy.

**April 15 | May 7 | June 10, 2026 | Online** Architecture decisions are hard to validate while shipping. Join a **5-week online cohort** for **senior engineers, architects, and team leads** to pressure-test real decisions, apply practical frameworks, and work through challenges with a confidential peer group. Facilitated by Luca Mezzalira, Principal Architect at AWS, this cohort helps you: * Pressure-test real decisions. * Apply frameworks to real problems. * Publish on InfoQ.com and earn your certification. **RESERVE YOUR PLACE**

#### Events

• ##### Online InfoQ Architect Certification

April 15 | May 7 | June 10, 2026

• ##### QCon AI Boston

June 1-2, 2026

• ##### QCon San Francisco

November 16-20, 2026

#### Follow us on

Youtube 232K FollowersLinkedin 26K FollowersRSS 19K ReadersX 57.1k FollowersFacebook 21K LikesBluesky NewAlexa New

#### Stay in the know

The InfoQ PodcastEngineering Culture PodcastThe Software Architects' Newsletter

General Feedback [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Advertising [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Editorial [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) Marketing [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

InfoQ.com and all content copyright © 2006-2026 C4Media Inc.

Privacy Notice, Terms And Conditions, Cookie Policy

Close

[BT](http://www.infoq.com/int/bt/ "bt")