Unclear if "has remote parent" flag reliable.

[gbbr]

The "has remote parent" flag (Go, Python, Java) is not mentioned anywhere on the website or in the specification, but seems to be implemented in all languages.

Are exporters expected to have reliable access to this attribute cross-language? Should this be specified somewhere?

[gbbr]

@Ramonza what is the significance of the thumbs up? Is it a) "yes it is reliable and we should put it in the specs" or b) "we don't know if it's reliable and should decide"?

How essential is this flag to OpenCensus? Is it always set on all children? Does the value of true guarantee to be set on all process-level root spans (with remote parents)?

[semistrict]

I'm not really sure, I just meant to indicate that I agree that the issue needs clarification.
@bogdandrutu may be able to provide more information.

[codefromthecrypt]

fyi I have heard a few times that APMs often group by remote span and report in one go. one way to accomplish this is to propagate the remote span ID instead of a boolean. makes it easy to partition the data in theory.