Distributed tracing is a key feature of modern application performance monitoring as application architectures are shifting from monolithic to more distributed,
service-based architectures.
Distributed tracing allows APM users to automatically trace requests all the way through the service architecture,
This is accomplished by tracing all of the requests, from the initial web request to your front-end service,
to queries made to your back-end services.
This makes finding possible bottlenecks throughout your application much easier and faster.
By definition, a distributed trace includes more than one transaction.
You can use the <<spans,span timeline visualization>> to view a waterfall display of all of the transactions from individual services that are connected in a trace.