Trace view should show an error or warning when the span count exceeds the internal limit

[stenet]

Describe the bug
According to my tests, only 1000 elements are displayed in tracing view. This leads to the parent-child hierarchy being displayed as missing/incorrect.

As you can be seen in this screenshot, there is an entry with this missing SpanId

and all log entries also exist.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Clone https://github.com/stenet/seq-tracing
2. Change your SEQ-Url
3. Run it and execute the default endpoint http://localhost:5064
4. Go to SEQ and filter the TraceId
5. See the same as in the screenshot

Expected behavior
All entries belonging to a TraceId should be displayed correctly and with the correct hierarchy.

Screenshots
See above

Environment (please complete the following information):

• OS: Linux
• Browser Chrome
• Seq Version 2024.3.13181
• Using Docker? Yes

[KodrAus]

Hi @stenet 👋

This is a limitation we imposed on the trace view when we first built it to protect the system from attempting to load possibly degenerate traces and tanking either query or UI performance.

It's just a starting point though, we picked what sounded like a pretty high number in the beginning. Do you have traces in your application with more than 1000 spans?

For this specific case, I think it's reasonable to expect the trace you see when it's truncated is still properly linked, so if we're going to load 1000 spans, they'd be 1000 spans starting from the root and working down the leaves. Unfortunately, based on how Seq stores spans it's not really possible for us to load them that way, and the only reasonable behavior we could have to guarantee that property would be to refuse to render anything if we observe a trace with more than 1000 spans in it. I actually think that's probably the best thing for us to do.

[nblumhardt]

The trace view should be showing an error in this situation, we'll check out whether the error has been lost somewhere and fix it if so. Thanks for the report!