Is it possible to have a the WCF Client activity get a parent activity?

[ryankelley]

Possible to have a the WCF Client activity get a parent activity?

List of all OpenTelemetry NuGet packages and version that you are using (e.g. OpenTelemetry 1.3.2):

• OpenTelemetry.Api.ProviderBuilderExtensions - version=1.7.0-alpha.1
• OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol - version=1.7.0-alpha.1
• OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.AspNet - version=1.6.0-beta.2
• OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.AspNet.TelemetryHttpModule - version=1.6.0-beta.2
• OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.Http - version=1.6.0-beta.2
• OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.Wcf - version=1.0.0-rc.13

Runtime version (e.g. net462, net48, net6.0, net7.0 etc. You can find this information from the *.csproj file):

• net481

Is this a feature request or a bug?

• [x] Feature Request
• [ ] Bug

What is the expected behavior?

I'd like to see if there is a way for the ActivityStart for the WCF Client, ClientChannelInstrumentation to have the ability to read a parent activity id from somewhere?

What is the actual behavior?

Currently, when the client activity is started:

var activity = WcfInstrumentationActivitySource.ActivitySource.StartActivity(
			WcfInstrumentationActivitySource.OutgoingRequestActivityName,
			ActivityKind.Client);

Any context about where the activity started from is lost. In my case we are getting a new client from within a web request and sending out to a remote WCF service and handling the response.

Current Behavior:

I modified some things in a copy of code and was able to get the result I wanted, I'm just not sure that it's the "WCF" way or the best way with OpenTelemetry.

What I essentially did for this, was to grab the existing span id and parent id and craft a W3C traceparent header value and add to the message before it gets to the TelemetryBehavior

This may be a good question for @repl-chris seeing as the overhaul he recently completed made much of this way easier with WCF. 🎉

Not 100% sure if I am asking in the correct location either, feel free to redirect me to the best place if not.

TLDR:

• Is it possible to set or pull the parent activity before creating and starting the activity for the WCF client?
• If there is another way, I am all ears :)