[APM] Numeric span labels are no longer displayed alongside string labels, need to scroll

[cyrille-leclerc]

Kibana version

8.0-rc1

Steps to Reproduce

Capture APM spans with numeric span labels (or Otel span attributes) added using span APIs.

Expected Behavior

Labels, whatever their type, are displayed in a sorted compact list.

Actual Behavior

Span numeric labels are no longer displayed alongside the string labels, the user needs to scroll down on the flyout.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/apm-ui (Team:apm)

[sorenlouv]

The metadata sections are sorted alphabetically, except for the "labels" section which is pinned to the top. Should we do the same with the "numeric_labels" section, or is the suggestion to merge it together with the "labels" section?

[formgeist]

@sqren I reckon we should "pin" numeric_labels to the top after labels

[sorenlouv]

Sounds good 👍

[cyrille-leclerc]

Pinning seems to be a good step forward. I would love eventually to merge all the labels in the same alpha sorted buckets.
The fact that labels are split between numeric labels in one group and all other types in another group feels like an implementation detail to me.
By the way, in which group would I find an array of numeric or a date? These are questions I would be abstracted from.

Does it make sense?

[simitt]

Server side, there are no plans to consolidate numeric_labels with labels, we just separated them out to align better with ECS. Any kind of consolidation should be done on the UI side.
I agree that the concrete type can be considered an implementation detail, but given the limited amount of types we currently support - bool (labels), string (labels) and numeric values (numeric_labels) - and that there are no plans to extend this, pinning might be good enough for now.

[axw]

++ agreed that this is an unfortunate, leaky implementation detail.

We hope to migrate labels.* to the flattened field type in the future. We could put numerical label values in flattened without having to worry about mapping conflicts, but flattened has limited supported operations. In particular, you wouldn't be able to do things like numerical range queries (range is supported, but the values are treated as strings).

[gbamparop]

This is fixed by #151575