What is Tracer?

Tracer, in the context of software development and distributed systems, refers to a tool or library used for distributed tracing. Distributed tracing is a method of monitoring and profiling applications, especially those built on a microservices architecture. It helps developers understand the flow of requests through different services, identify performance bottlenecks, and diagnose failures. Tracers typically work by injecting unique identifiers into requests as they propagate through the system, allowing the path of the request to be reconstructed and analyzed. Examples of popular tracers include Jaeger, Zipkin, and the tracing components within cloud platforms like AWS X-Ray or Google Cloud Trace.