Funny results, especially when comparing with other progs

General discussions about Advanced Log Analyzer
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ApeZone
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2005 5:32 pm

Funny results, especially when comparing with other progs

Post by ApeZone »

Hi, just bought a copy. BTW, your 30 day trial seems to end when the month changes.

Noticed that all of my Most Common User Paths never include my home page (index.htm). I figured that it uses a slash (/) to signify the home page. But some of the other web log analyzers that I use, show my home page in most of the top user paths. Any ideas why or am I reading it wrong?

Tried setting up a report to list the # of downloads (requests) for a demo file of mine. The data returned doesn't seem remotely correct (according to other programs I've used to analyze the same data).

After creating a report, doesn't clear the cache when I select the Analyze button again. Only way to get the new report included is to delete the file in the cache folder. Am I missing something?

At this point, I'm a little concerned with the accuracy of the data produced by this product.
Andrew
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Abacre
Site Admin
Posts: 1223
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2005 5:32 pm

Post by Abacre »

Hi Andrew,

> Noticed that all of my Most Common User Paths never include my home
> page (index.htm). I figured that it uses a slash (/) to signify the
> home page. But some of the other web log analyzers that I use, show
> my home page in most of the top user paths. Any ideas why or am I
> reading it wrong?
It depends which SITE filters do you have. For example in sample site
that appears in configuration we have a site filter that transforms
all /index.htm requests into /.
So if you remove the filter index.htm will be listed in reports.

> Tried setting up a report to list the # of downloads (requests) for
> a demo file of mine. The data returned doesn't seem remotely correct
> (according to other programs I've used to analyze the same data).
Well you touched a very interesting topic. Between log analyzer
developers and software site holders there is always many debates how to
correctly count downloads of zip and exe files. Considering that many
people use download managers splitting downloads into random number of
small parties.

Finally in ALA we development calculation of number of downloads by
calculation of total transferred bytes for a file divided by size of
the file. This is a well known and correct formula. We verified it
several times and even we made step by step reading of plain log file.
So the reports about downloads are correct. In each basic report you
may normally find "Hits" parameter and "Downloads" parameters. So we
were talking about "Downloads" parameter.

> After creating a report, doesn't clear the cache when I select the
> Analyze button again. Only way to get the new report included is to
> delete the file in the cache folder. Am I missing something?
cache file is needed only to not analyze the same data twice. But
program may work also quickly without creation of cache file too. In
main menu File - Options - General - Switch OFF "Incremental analysis"
option. So in a testing mode when you are trying to create and test your
new reports you may use it without cache file ("Incremental analysis"
is OFF). But when reports work finely you may switch on "Incremental
analysis" again to speed up the analysis.

Read also:

How to measure accuracy of results?
http://www.abacre.com/ala/manual/faqaccuracy.htm

What is visits, hits, requests?
http://www.abacre.com/ala/manual/visits_hits_req.htm

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