Investigate large and long-running traces
Most traces open instantly and fit on screen. Some don't: a high-fanout request can produce tens of thousands of spans, and a long-running workflow—a batch job, a queue consumer, a large scan—can stretch across hours or days. Loading all of that at once would freeze the browser and slow the backend, so Explore spans works with large and long-running traces in bounded chunks instead.
This page explains the limits that apply to these traces and the controls that let you work within them: how to gauge a trace's true size before you open it, how to window a long trace in time, and how to load a trace that exceeds the display cap.
When a trace is large or long-running
Two independent dimensions push a trace past the defaults:
- Large: the trace has many spans. Above the per-view display cap, the drilldown shows a subset at a time rather than every span at once.
- Long-running: the trace spans a long wall-clock duration. Above the maximum window, the drilldown shows a slice of the timeline rather than the entire trace at once.
A trace can be one, the other, or both. The controls below address each dimension.
Limits
These limits apply to the span drilldown and its views (Dependencies, Flame, and Gantt).
| Limit | Value | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Spans displayed per view | 20,000 | Dependencies (Service view and Span view), Flame, Gantt |
| Spans per CSV export | 50,000 | CSV export |
| Maximum trace time window | 3 days | All views |
| Detailed views availability | Unavailable above 100,000 spans | Flame, Dependencies Span view |
When a trace exceeds 20,000 spans, each view displays up to 20,000 at a time—use Load more spans or the time range picker to reach the rest. When a trace exceeds 100,000 spans, the Flame and Dependencies Span view toggles are disabled—these views render every span individually, which isn't practical at that scale. Dependencies Service view and Gantt remain available.
Check the true size of a trace
The span counts, error status, and duration you see for a trace always reflect the whole trace, independent of the time range you've queried. Narrowing the Explore time range changes which traces appear in the table, not the totals reported for each one—so you can identify a large or long-running trace before you open it.
In the Traces tab
In the Traces tab of Explore spans, each row is a single trace. The Span count, Error, and Duration columns report the trace's true totals, so you can spot the outliers—the traces with the most spans or the longest duration—at a glance.
In the drilldown summary bar
When you open a trace, the summary bar at the top of the drilldown reports its size:
- Services: the number of services in the trace.
- Spans: shown as
visible / totalwhen internal spans are hidden, or as the total count when internal spans are shown. The visible count reflects how many spans are currently loaded into the view; the total reflects the whole trace. - Depth: the deepest level of nesting in the span tree.
- Duration: the end-to-end duration of the trace's root span.
If the visible count is lower than the total, the view is showing a subset—use the controls below to load or window the rest.
Find long or large traces
To surface these traces before opening them, work in the Traces tab:
- Largest traces: sort the Span count column in descending order to bring the highest-span-count traces to the top.
- Longest traces: sort the Duration column in descending order. Duration is the trace's end-to-end (root-span) duration.
You can also filter for long-running traces from the Spans tab. The Duration filter targets span duration—trace duration isn't a direct filter—but a root span's duration equals the trace's end-to-end duration, so:
- Open Relation and add the Only root filter to restrict results to root spans (one per trace).
- Apply a Duration filter with a high minimum—for example,
60000msto∞for traces longer than a minute, or a percentile such asp99.
The result is the set of root spans—and therefore traces—with the longest end-to-end duration. See Query builder for spans for the full filter reference.
Window a long trace with the time range picker
The time range picker in the drilldown header controls the query window for every view. For a trace that spans more than 3 days, the drilldown can't display the entire timeline at once—select a window of up to 3 days and move through the trace in segments.
- When the selected range covers the full trace, the picker indicates that every span is in view. Narrow the range to focus on a specific interval.
- When the selected range is shorter than the trace, the picker indicates that spans may exist outside the window. Widen the range to load them.
Changing the time range reloads the span tree and re-fetches the Related data tabs within the new window.
Use it to
- Move through a multi-day trace one window at a time.
- Focus on the interval where an error or latency spike occurred.
Load more spans
For a large trace, the drilldown opens with the first 20,000 spans and loads the rest on demand, so the Gantt, Flame, and Dependencies views stay responsive instead of rendering every span at once. When more spans remain, a Load more spans button appears in all three views; each selection loads the next 20,000 spans and appends them without resetting your scroll position. The summary bar's visible / total spans count tracks progress, and the button is disabled with the tooltip No more spans to load. once the whole trace is loaded.
Focus on a region with Show Surrounding Spans
When a trace is too large or too long to load in full, you don't always need the whole thing—often you just need the spans around one point of interest. From a node or span's quick actions, select Show Surrounding Spans and choose a window: 5 Minutes, 15 Minutes, 30 Minutes, 1 Hour, or 3 Hours. Coralogix opens a new tab scoped to the selected span with the surrounding spans loaded for that window.
Use it to
- Inspect the spans immediately before and after a span of interest when the full trace exceeds the display or time limits.
- Investigate what was happening around a specific operation without loading the entire trace.
Export the full trace to CSV
To work with a trace beyond what any view displays, export it. Select Export in the drilldown header, then Export trace CSV. The export includes up to 50,000 spans—more than the 20,000-span per-view cap—and uses the drilldown's current time range, so set the window before you export. Coralogix processes the export in the background and notifies you when the file is ready.