Is it possible to send OpenTelemetry traces with dd-trace directly to DataDog, without using the agent

[InesNi]

Hi team,

I am trying to send OpenTelemetry traces directly to DataDog by using dd-trace library and I have a few questions:

• Is it even possible to send the traces directly to DataDog API without going through the agent?
• If yes, how do I configure the tracer to do this?

I've tried setting the DD_API_KEY with env variables, setting the experimental: {exporter: "datadog"} etc.

process.env.DD_TRACE_OTEL_ENABLED = 'true'
process.env['DD_API_KEY'] = myApiKey
const tracer = require('dd-trace').init({
  experimental: {
    exporter: "datadog"
  }
})

const provider = new tracer.TracerProvider()
provider.register()

• the code above gives me ECONNREFUSED, as it tries to connect to local host searching for the agent.

if I set the exporter to 'log' I can see all the traces are there and seem properly configured, I just can't seem to get them to the platform without using the agent.

I have tried multiple things which I can share, but first want to understand if this is even possible.
I am completely new to DataDog so I might be missing something very obvious, or trying something impossible. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you 🙏🏻