Overview
Observability fails when it collects data without making it answerable. A system with a million log lines per second and no structured format is less observable than a system with 10,000 structured log lines per second — because the unstructured logs can't be filtered, aggregated, or queried for specific patterns. Observability is the property that allows you to answer "what happened to request X, and why did it fail" from the data the system emits — without changing the code to add more instrumentation.
The Observability Architecture Framework implements the three pillars (logs, metrics, traces) in a way that makes system behavior queryable and that connects all three to a single request for debugging.