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Display linked spans in the trace view #1593
Description
This would be particularly helpful for messaging mechanisms that support fan-out and batch processing. Because each message in a batch is not necessarily mapped 1-1 with a single traceparent, OTEL instrumentation uses links to associate the trace for "receiving" the message(s) with the parent span, rather than setting a parent span directly.
HyperDX does not currently display linked spans in the trace view, but it would be extremely nice if it did. Currently such spans simply appear as orphans.
Reacted by simontownsend-thoughtful, Sean Albito, Vineet Ahirkar, Stéphane Evrard and Drew Hammond
Activity
simontownsend-thoughtful commentedon Mar 6, 2026
This would be very helpful for our use-case where we have fan-out behavior causing 100s or 1000s of child spans which would be better displayed as separate root spans which can be linked to from the originating span. Additionally, it would be great if there were a way for those spun off root spans to not be displayed in the trace search view. Something similar to
Root Spans Onlybut include an additional statement for hiding spans which contain links back to an originating span. ie)empty(Links.TraceId). This way we only see 'true' root spans.feat(traces): surface span links in the trace viewer (#2463)