In this video we add observability to our GraphQL API. We cover the three pillars (metrics, logging and traces) and look at the new spring-boot-starter-opentelemetry introduced in Spring Boot 4. This starter gives you production-ready observability without needing the full Actuator setup. GraphQL is a great use case for this because a single query can fan out across multiple data sources. We walk through adding the dependency, making some queries against our API and then drilling into Grafana to explore the metrics and traces so you can see exactly what's happening inside your application.

📹 About this Course
In this series you'll learn how to build a GraphQL API from scratch using Spring Boot. We'll start with why GraphQL exists and work our way through schema design, data fetchers, performance optimization, observability and more. 

📦 GitHub Repository - GraphQL Books: https://github.com/danvega/graphql-books
📖 Spring for GraphQL Documentation: https://docs.spring.io/spring-graphql/reference/
🔧 GraphQL Java: https://www.graphql-java.com/
🚀 Spring Initializr: https://start.spring.io
📘 GraphQL Specification: https://spec.graphql.org

👋🏻Connect with me:
Website: https://www.danvega.dev
Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealdanvega
Github: https://github.com/danvega
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danvega
Newsletter: https://www.danvega.dev/newsletter

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Dan Vega

A tutorial on adding observability to GraphQL applications built with Spring for GraphQL and Spring Boot 4. Covers the three pillars of observability (logging, metrics, traces) and demonstrates how to use the new Spring Boot Starter OpenTelemetry to get production-ready instrumentation with minimal setup. Shows how to configure trace sampling probability, use the LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir) via Docker Compose, and visualize GraphQL query traces and metrics in Grafana to identify performance bottlenecks in data-fetching operations.

GraphQL for Java Developers: 09 - Observability