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MichaelKatsoulis
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@MichaelKatsoulis MichaelKatsoulis commented Oct 9, 2025

Description

This PR updates the aws.vpc.flow.start field type and value format for better standards compliance.

Current State:

  • Field: aws.vpc.flow.start (integer)
  • Value: Unix timestamp in seconds since epoch (e.g., 1609459200)

Problem:
The field represents the start timestamp of a VPC flow log entry. AWS provides this value as seconds since epoch, but OpenTelemetry semantic conventions don't currently define timestamp fields using this format. The majority of timestamp fields in semconv use either ISO-8601 string format or nanoseconds since epoch.

Solution:
This PR converts the field to:

  • Field: aws.vpc.flow.start (string)
  • Value: ISO-8601 formatted timestamp (e.g., "2021-01-01T00:00:00.000Z")

Benefits:

  • Better alignment with semantic convention patterns
  • Human-readable timestamp format
  • No additional mapping required by downstream consumers
  • Consistent with other timestamp fields in the ecosystem

Example:

  • Before: aws.vpc.flow.start: 1609459200 (int64)
  • After: aws.vpc.flow.start: "2021-01-01T00:00:00.000Z" (string)

Related Issue

@axw
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axw commented Oct 10, 2025

@MichaelKatsoulis given that this has been out in the wild for a little while, I think we should put this change behind a featuregate

@MichaelKatsoulis
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@axw I created a feature gate

@MichaelKatsoulis MichaelKatsoulis marked this pull request as ready for review October 10, 2025 10:15
…com:MichaelKatsoulis/opentelemetry-collector-contrib into chore/set-timestamp-field-to-iso8601-format
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@constanca-m constanca-m left a comment

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I am lifting my approval until we change to RFC3339 format

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@axw axw left a comment

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LGTM!

@axw axw added the ready to merge Code review completed; ready to merge by maintainers label Oct 14, 2025
@mx-psi mx-psi merged commit 73e54da into open-telemetry:main Oct 14, 2025
184 of 186 checks passed
@github-actions github-actions bot added this to the next release milestone Oct 14, 2025
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otelbot bot commented Oct 14, 2025

Thank you for your contribution @MichaelKatsoulis! 🎉 We would like to hear from you about your experience contributing to OpenTelemetry by taking a few minutes to fill out this survey. If you are getting started contributing, you can also join the CNCF Slack channel #opentelemetry-new-contributors to ask for guidance and get help.

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7 participants