system.device vs device.id vs hw.id

[lmolkova]

See #1408 (comment) for the context

• device.id is an id of a mobile device (or another device on which instrumented process is running)
• hw.id is an id of a hardware component
• system.device is an id of a virtual or physical component such as disk, network interface, etc

The proposal is to

• merge hw.id and system.device into a new attribute that would represent physical or virtual component and can be reused in HW and system metrics
• if for some reason it's not possible, the system.device should be elaborated and should include the property being described (e.g. system.device.id or system.device.name)

[joaopgrassi]

In here https://github.com/open-telemetry/semantic-conventions/pull/1413/files#diff-abc3e1468589797073cc2e0fcb7620efd3e94bf4c37ac3e669c7793f0ed226acR18 there's also dc.device.type, so another "duplication"

[ChrsMark]

What would be the difference between system.device.id and system.device.name?

[joaopgrassi]

I guess it's just so we have a way to represent a "real" id and a read-friendly version of the device. But probably the most important thing is that system.device stops being an attribute and becomes a namespace. We are trying to avoid such cases as we have had problems in the past.

[ChrsMark]

system.device is an id of a virtual or physical component such as disk, network interface, etc

regarding network interfaces there is a related discussion: #308 (comment)