Feature request: Support regex/wildcard in Jaeger API tag search

[manideep-qlub]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Summary

We use Victoria Traces with Jaeger UI (proxying to vtselect's /select/jaeger/api). After migrating from Jaeger with Elasticsearch backend, tag searches using regex/wildcards no longer work.

Current behavior

• Exact match: tag_name=exact_value — works (when applicable)
• Regex/wildcard: tag_name=prefix.* — returns no results

Expected behavior

Regex and wildcard patterns in tag values should be supported in the Jaeger API tag search, similar to Jaeger's Elasticsearch backend.

Context

• Use case: Filter traces by tag values matching a pattern (e.g. all values starting with a given prefix)
• Setup: OTel collector → Victoria Traces vtinsert; Jaeger UI → vtselect /select/jaeger/api
• Victoria Traces version: 0.7.0 (from helm chart)

Workaround

None currently. Users must use exact tag values or query via TraceQL/Grafana if supported.

References

• Jaeger PR #2049: Support regex tags search for Elasticsearch backend
• Victoria Traces querying docs: https://docs.victoriametrics.com/victoriatraces/querying/

Describe the solution you'd like

Summary

We use Victoria Traces with Jaeger UI (proxying to vtselect's /select/jaeger/api). After migrating from Jaeger with Elasticsearch backend, tag searches using regex/wildcards no longer work.

Current behavior

• Exact match: tag_name=exact_value — works (when applicable)
• Regex/wildcard: tag_name=prefix.* — returns no results

Expected behavior

Regex and wildcard patterns in tag values should be supported in the Jaeger API tag search, similar to Jaeger's Elasticsearch backend.

Context

• Use case: Filter traces by tag values matching a pattern (e.g. all values starting with a given prefix)
• Setup: OTel collector → Victoria Traces vtinsert; Jaeger UI → vtselect /select/jaeger/api
• Victoria Traces version: 0.7.0 (from helm chart)

Workaround

None currently. Users must use exact tag values or query via TraceQL/Grafana if supported.

References

• Jaeger PR #2049: Support regex tags search for Elasticsearch backend
• Victoria Traces querying docs: https://docs.victoriametrics.com/victoriatraces/querying/

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional information

No response

[jiekun]

Hi this sounds very useful since Jaeger doesnt support auto completion.

In VictoriaTraces, regex on value is supported by LogsQL so it require only minor change to support in Jaeger APIs. We'll do it.

And further more, we have plan to support regex (or lets start from prefix/suffix) on tag name. So I expect we can do something like this: status.*=OK to find spans with attribute status.message=OK or status.code=OK.