name: SigNoz Vocabulary
description: >-
  Vocabulary and taxonomy for SigNoz, the open-source OpenTelemetry-native
  observability platform covering APM, distributed tracing, log management,
  and infrastructure monitoring.
version: '1.0'
created: '2026-05-02'
modified: '2026-05-02'

domains:
  - name: Observability
    description: The ability to measure the internal state of a system by examining its outputs.
    terms:
      - name: APM
        label: Application Performance Monitoring
        description: >-
          Monitoring and management of performance and availability of software applications.
      - name: Distributed Tracing
        label: Distributed Tracing
        description: >-
          Tracking requests as they propagate through distributed microservices systems.
      - name: Log Management
        label: Log Management
        description: >-
          Centralized collection, storage, search, and analysis of log data from applications and infrastructure.
      - name: Metrics
        label: Metrics
        description: >-
          Quantitative measurements collected over time representing the health and performance of systems.
      - name: OpenTelemetry
        label: OpenTelemetry
        description: >-
          An open-source observability framework providing vendor-neutral APIs, SDKs, and tools
          for instrumenting, generating, and exporting telemetry data (metrics, logs, traces).

  - name: Alerting
    description: Mechanisms for detecting anomalies and notifying teams of issues.
    terms:
      - name: Alert Rule
        label: Alert Rule
        description: A configured condition that triggers a notification when thresholds are breached.
      - name: Downtime Schedule
        label: Downtime Schedule
        description: A scheduled maintenance window during which alerts are suppressed.
      - name: Notification Channel
        label: Notification Channel
        description: A destination for alert notifications (Slack, PagerDuty, email, webhook, etc.).
      - name: Route Policy
        label: Route Policy
        description: Rules defining how alerts are routed to specific notification channels.
      - name: Severity
        label: Severity
        description: >-
          The urgency level of an alert: info (informational), warning (degraded), critical (service impact).

  - name: Data Collection
    description: Mechanisms for receiving and processing telemetry data.
    terms:
      - name: Ingestion Key
        label: Ingestion Key
        description: API key used to authenticate telemetry data sent to SigNoz.
      - name: Signal Type
        label: Signal Type
        description: Category of telemetry data: logs, traces, or metrics.
      - name: Span
        label: Span
        description: A single unit of work within a distributed trace, representing an operation.
      - name: Trace
        label: Trace
        description: A complete record of a request's journey through distributed services, composed of spans.
      - name: Log
        label: Log
        description: A timestamped record of an event that occurred in an application or system.
      - name: Metric
        label: Metric
        description: A time-series measurement of a system characteristic (counter, gauge, histogram, summary).

  - name: Visualization
    description: Tools for displaying and exploring telemetry data.
    terms:
      - name: Dashboard
        label: Dashboard
        description: A collection of visualization panels displaying metrics, logs, and trace data.
      - name: Widget
        label: Widget
        description: An individual visualization panel within a dashboard.
      - name: Panel Type
        label: Panel Type
        description: >-
          The visualization style of a dashboard widget: graph, table, value, bar, pie, histogram, list.
      - name: Query Builder
        label: Query Builder
        description: A visual interface for constructing queries against telemetry data.
      - name: Flame Graph
        label: Flame Graph
        description: A hierarchical visualization of trace spans showing time spent in each operation.

  - name: Access Control
    description: Authentication, authorization, and user management capabilities.
    terms:
      - name: Service Account
        label: Service Account
        description: A non-human account used by automated systems to authenticate with the SigNoz API.
      - name: RBAC
        label: Role-Based Access Control
        description: Controlling API access based on roles assigned to users or service accounts.
      - name: Organization
        label: Organization
        description: The top-level tenant entity in SigNoz that groups users and resources.
      - name: SSO
        label: Single Sign-On
        description: Authentication via external identity providers using SAML or OIDC.

integrations:
  - name: Kubernetes
    description: Native Kubernetes infrastructure monitoring support.
  - name: AWS
    description: AWS cloud integration for metrics and logs collection.
  - name: GCP
    description: Google Cloud Platform integration for telemetry collection.
  - name: Azure
    description: Microsoft Azure cloud integration.
  - name: Prometheus
    description: Import Prometheus metrics into SigNoz.
  - name: Grafana
    description: Compatible dashboards and data sources.
  - name: PagerDuty
    description: Alert notification integration.
  - name: Slack
    description: Team notification channel integration.
  - name: OpsGenie
    description: Incident management integration.