Monitor PostgreSQL (psycopg3) using OpenTelemetry

Shield360 uses OpenTelemetry Auto-Instrumentation to help you monitor applications using PostgreSQL with the psycopg3 driver. This includes tracking query performance, transaction operations, connection pool metrics, and more.

Auto-instrumentation means you don’t have to set up monitoring manually for different databases or query types. By simply adding Shield360 in your application, all the necessary monitoring configurations are automatically set up.

The integration is compatible with

• psycopg >= 3.0.0
• psycopg_pool (optional, for connection pool monitoring)

Supported Operations

Operation	Description
execute	Single query execution
executemany	Batch query execution
copy	COPY operations for bulk data transfer
callproc	Stored procedure calls
commit	Transaction commits
rollback	Transaction rollbacks

PostgreSQL-Specific Features

Shield360 automatically detects and enriches traces with PostgreSQL-specific features:

• pgvector Support: Detects vector similarity operators (<=>, <->, <#>) and records the similarity metric (cosine, L2, inner product)
• Full-Text Search: Detects tsvector, tsquery, websearch_to_tsquery, and ts_rank operations

Get started

Install Shield360

Open your command line or terminal and run:

pip install shield360

Initialize Shield360 in your Application

Python

Zero Code Instrumentation

Perfect for existing applications - no code modifications needed:

Via CLI Arguments

# Configure via CLI arguments
shield360-instrument \
  --service-name my-ai-app \
  --environment production \
  --otlp-endpoint YOUR_OTEL_ENDPOINT \
  python your_app.py

Via Environment Variables

# Configure via environment variables
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-ai-app
export OTEL_DEPLOYMENT_ENVIRONMENT=production
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=YOUR_OTEL_ENDPOINT

# Run with zero code changes
shield360-instrument python your_app.py

Note

Perfect for: Legacy applications, production systems where code changes need approval, quick testing, or when you want to add observability without touching existing code.

One-Line Instrumentation

Via Function Parameters

import shield360

shield360.init(otlp_endpoint="YOUR_OTEL_ENDPOINT")

Via Environment Variables

Add the following two lines to your application code:

import shield360

shield360.init()

Then, configure the your OTLP endpoint using environment variable:

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=YOUR_OTEL_ENDPOINT

Typescript

One-Line Instrumentation (SDK)

Via Function Parameters

import shield360 from "shield360"

shield360.init({ otlpEndpoint: "YOUR_OTEL_ENDPOINT" })

Via Environment Variables

Add the following two lines to your application code:

import shield360 from "shield360"

shield360.init()

Then, configure the your OTLP endpoint using environment variable:

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=YOUR_OTEL_ENDPOINT

Replace: YOUR_OTEL_ENDPOINT with the URL of your OpenTelemetry backend, such as http://127.0.0.1:4318 if you are using Shield360 and a local OTel Collector.

To send metrics and traces to other Observability tools, refer to the supported destinations.

For more advanced configurations and application use cases, visit the SDK configuration reference or TypeScript SDK reference.

Advanced Configuration

Database-Specific Options

Shield360 provides additional configuration options for database instrumentation:

Parameter	Environment Variable	Description	Default
capture_db_parameters	SHIELD360_CAPTURE_DB_PARAMETERS	Capture query parameters in OTel per-key format (db.query.parameter.<key>)	False

capture_db_parameters

When enabled, query parameters are recorded as per-key span attributes following the OTel semantic convention db.query.parameter.<key>.

import shield360

shield360.init(capture_db_parameters=True)

Caution

Security Risk: Enabling capture_db_parameters may expose sensitive data like passwords, tokens, or PII in your traces. Only enable in development environments or when you’re certain parameters don’t contain sensitive information.

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Quickstart: Database Observability

Production-ready database monitoring setup in 2 simple steps

Configuration

Configure the Shield360 SDK according to your requirements.

Destinations

Send telemetry to Datadog, Grafana, New Relic, and other observability stacks