Beyond the Status Code: Why OpenTelemetry Tracing Matters for Spring Boot

OpenTelemetry's distributed tracing reveals performance problems that logs alone cannot detect, even when applications return HTTP 200 status codes. This editorial lab demonstrates how logging hides critical issues like N+1 queries and cascading latency that become visible only through end-to-end traces. It is essential reading for backend engineers seeking to understand the observability gap between basic metrics and true full-stack visibility.