June 2003
Note: This document is valid only for the command line release of Funnel Web Analyzer version 5.0 Patch2. Information on other platforms is present only for the sake of completeness.
© 2003 Quest Software Inc
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Welcome to Funnel Web Analyzer
Standard and Enterprise Editions
Installing Funnel Web Analyzer
Your web site is a critical point of contact with customers, providers and employees. Like any investment, you need to ensure that its progress and performance is thoroughly monitored.
Analyzer is the fastest and most accurate way to track and profile your web site activity. This powerful analysis tool was designed to provide you with all the information you need to help you optimize the effectiveness of your online investment.
Analyzer gives insight into everything from server load and customer usage to intranet analysis. It allows you to gain vital feedback on visitor behaviour and preferences, so you can more accurately customize your site to meet the needs of your clients.
In this release, Quest has added many new features including many powerful multimedia streaming analysis reports, an extended database facility, as well as many other minor enhancements and bug fixes. We hope you thoroughly enjoy using this new release and welcome any feedback you may have to help us make the product even better.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Funnel Web Analyzer 5.0 is available in either the Standard or Enterprise Editions. The differences between them are as follows:
Enterprise supports Streaming Media Analysis mode, which features several industrial-strength streaming analysis reports.
Enterprise provides a Customer Billing report, which allows cost tracking on a per customer basis.
Enterprise provides a Timeslot Analysis report, which is similar to the traffic reports (for example Hourly) except that a user-defined timeslot interval may be specified.
Enterprise supports an Extended Database facility, whereby the settings used when re-processing a database do not depend upon and may be completely different to the settings used when the original log data was added.
Enterprise supports Cluster Analysis: the simultaneous processing of log files from multiple web servers in a cluster, as though a single "logical" server. The associated Load Balancing report analyzes usage of each server in the cluster.
Enterprise provides a Click-Stream report: this shows the exact online behaviour of users.
Enterprise provides a Session Distribution report: a graph of page access versus total time online.
Enterprise provides advertising statistics, in the form of impressions (what the user has viewed) and campaign reports; including the associated settings.
Enterprise supports statistics grouped by referral patterns.
Enterprise supports various tracking reports to help you understand the routes taken by visitors to your web site.
Enterprise supports diagnostic reports such as pages containing broken links and the top referrals on errors drilldown.
Enterprise provides a Circulation report: showing the frequency of visits to your web site.
Enterprise supports Content Groups, which maps traffic to particular groups of URL's.
Enterprise supports Flushing Mode, which saves memory usage when processing very large log files.
Enterprise supports the conversion of any set of log files to a standard W3C-conformant file, suitable for exporting to a relational database.
Enterprise provides the ability to zip up and attach reports to email notification messages sent by the post-processor.
Standard supports processing data for up to 10 virtual domains; Enterprise supports processing data up to 1,000 virtual domains.
Funnel Web Analyzer 5.0 is supported on Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and Red Hat Linux platforms as follows:
Red Hat Linux version 7.0 (or above) running on Intel Pentium or AMD processors.
Mandrake Linux version 9.0 (or above) running on Intel Pentium or AMD processors.<br>
The Analyzer installation package requires RPM version 4.0 (or above) to be resident on the target machine.
To install Analyzer under Windows, perform the following steps:
To install Analyzer on Mac OS X, perform the following steps:
or if using Funnelweb Analyzer free version:
ln -s /Applications/FW\ Analyzer\ Free\ 5.0/bin/fwa5-free /usr/bin/fwa5-free
If you have the 5.0 Funnel Web Analyzer Free Enterprise version. You can register the application by copying the following file:
/Applications/FW Analyzer Enterprise 5.0/fweb5.reg
to the following location:
/etc/fweb5.reg
(or for the 5.0 free version):
gzip -d AnalyzerFree-5.0-sparc-solaris.pkg.gz
(gzip can be obtained from http://sunfreeware.com)
(or for the 5.0 free version):
pkgadd -d AnalyzerFree-5.0-sparc-solaris.pkg
and following the prompts. Analyzer will be installed into /opt/Analyzer or /opt/AnalyzerFree5 by default. The default base directory of /opt may be overridden if desired. To do so, enter a response of n when asked whether or not you would like to install Analyzer into its default base directory. You will then be prompted for a preferred base directory. Its binary (fwa5) will be installed into <base directory>/Analyzer/bin/ and will automatically be soft-linked to /usr/bin/ for normal usage. All users will be able to run Analyzer from any location on the machine by entering the command fwa5 or fwa5-free.
(or for the 5.0 Free Version):
rpm -i AnalyzerFree-5.0-linux-2.4-intel.rpm
Analyzer will be installed into the home directory /usr/local/Analyzer or /usr/local/AnalyzerFree5 Its binary (fwa5) will be installed into /usr/local/Analyzer/bin/ and will automatically be soft-linked to /usr/bin/ for normal usage. All users will be able to run Analyzer from any location on the machine by entering the command fwa5 or fwa5-free for the free version.
Except where otherwise specified, the following list applies to all platform releases of Analyzer 5.0.
The Enterprise version features 2 new modes of operation: web mode and streaming mode. Web mode is used to perform the same powerful web traffic analysis that has been carried out in previous versions of Analyzer. To enter web mode, select New Settings - Web from the File menu. By default, Analyzer is already in web mode after installation. Streaming mode introduces the ability to perform industrial-strength streaming media traffic analysis and includes 36 new reports, 7 of which have historical variants. To enter streaming mode, select New Settings - Streaming from the File menu. The new streaming mode reports are as follows:
Top Error Codes Per Clip. This report shows a breakdown of the different errors experienced by visitors when accessing each clip.
Web Pages Referencing Invalid Clips. This report shows web pages which contain broken links to streaming media content on your site.
Average Packet Loss Per Clip. This report shows the average packet loss for each clip and allows administrators to diagnose possible transmission bottlenecks with certain clips.
Packet Loss vs. Transfer Rate. This report shows the amount of packet loss being experienced at different transfer rates, as well as the number of clips being played at the corresponding transfer rate.
Average Seconds Buffered Per Clip. This report shows the amount of time users had to wait while clips were buffering (at the start of and during a session).
Highest Quality Clips. This report identifies the highest quality clips on your site, measured as the percentage of data sent by the server versus the actual amount of data received by the visitor.
Lowest Quality Clips. This report identifies the lowest quality clips on your site, measured as the percentage of data sent by the server versus the actual amount of data received by the visitor.
Most Popular Video Clips. This report shows the most popular video clips viewed on your site. There is also a history version of this report.
Video Clip Viewing Times. This report details the average time spent viewing video clips.
Video Clip Transfer Rates. This report gauges the average transfer rate of streamed video clips as well as the total bandwidth consumed by these clips.
Most Popular Audio Clips. This report shows the most popular audio clips played on your site. There is also a history version of this report.
Audio Clip Listening Times. This report details the average time spent listening to audio clips.
Audio Clip Transfer Rates. This report gauges the average transfer rate of streamed audio clips as well as the total bandwidth consumed by these clips.
Most Popular Clips. This report shows the most popular audio and video clips being viewed on your site. There is also a history version of this report.
Least Played Clips. This report shows the least popular audio and video clips being played on your site.
First Entry Clips. This report shows the audio and video clips by which visitors entered your site. There is also a history version of this report.
Maximum Concurrent Connections Per Clip. This report shows the point in time at which an audio or video clip attracted its maximum number of concurrent connections.
Percentage Streamed Per Clip. This report shows the average amount of megabytes transferred to users viewing streaming audio or video clips, contrasted against the total expected number of megabytes.
Uninterrupted Plays Per Clip. This report identifies the number of times an audio or video clip was successfully played from start to finish without rewinding or forward-winding.
Average Forward Winds Per Clip. This report shows the average number of times an audio or video clip was forward-wound in one session.
Average Rewinds Per Clip. This report shows the average number of times an audio or video clip is rewound in one session.
Media Types. This report shows the different types of audio and video media being accessed on your site.
Most Popular Live Video Clips. This report shows the most popular live video clips viewed on your site. There is also a history version of this report.
Live Video Clip Viewing Times. This report details the average time spent viewing live video clips.
Live Video Clip Transfer Rates. This report gauges the average transfer rate of streamed live video clips as well as the total bandwidth consumed by these clips.
Most Popular Live Audio Clips. This report shows the most popular live audio clips played on your site. There is also a history version of this report.
Live Audio Clip Listening Times. This report details the average time spent listening to live audio clips.
Live Audio Clip Transfer Rates. This report gauges the average transfer rate of streamed live audio clips as well as the total bandwidth consumed by these clips.
Maximum Concurrent Connections Per Live Clip. This report shows the point in time that a live clip attracted its maximum number of concurrent connections.
Media Players Used. This report shows the most popular programs being used to access streaming content. There is also a history version of this report.
Media Players vs. Operating Systems. This report shows the Media Players (and their version number) being used by site visitors to stream content on your site, along with the operating system on which they are running.
Most Popular CPU Types. This report shows the most popular CPU types being used by site visitors.
Most Popular Languages. This report shows the most popular default languages being used on the systems of your visitors.
Protocols Used To Transfer Clips. This report shows the different types of protocols used to transfer clips. It also displays the Average Packet Loss and amount of errors associated with certain protocols.
Most Utilized Audio Codecs. This report identifies the codecs that are used to listen to audio content on your site. It also gives information on the amount of errors associated with each codec.
Most Utilized Video Codecs. This report identifies the codecs that are used to view video content on your site. It also gives information on the amount of errors associated with each codec.
Webcast Reports. In webcast analysis mode, an individual virtual domain-style report is produced for each webcast defined within your settings.
Timeslot Analysis. This report is similar to the other standard traffic reports (for example Hourly) except that the actual timeslot interval may be specified via your settings.
Billing Customers. This report outlines information such as bandwidth consumed, raw data transferred, concurrent connection count as well as a final charge, for each customer defined within your settings.
Enterprise supports an Extended Database facility, whereby log data is added to an extended database in a manner that preserves individual log entries. Consequently, the database may be re-processed with different settings than those used when the log data was originally added.
The Enterprise post-process email notification facility has a new option to zip up and attach the report to the email notification message.
Analyzer has had a facelift with new toolbar and settings icons. Analyzer's reports also feature a new look and feel with new banners and colors.
Analyzer is now able to save HTML reports with extensions other than .html, such as .asp, .cfm and .php.
When processing more than a single log at a time, Analyzer now pre-sorts the logs to ensure that they're processed in the correct time order. This applies to normal processing as well as to scheduled processing.
The filename of the HTML summary template may now be specified via the settings. This makes switching between multiple summary template files easier.
PDF and RTF reports have been enhanced with the addition of external hyperlinks that operate in a similar manner to hyperlinks within HTML reports.
Support has been added for accessing ftp servers on port numbers other than 21. To specify a different port, append a colon followed by the port number to the ftp sever host. This applies to ftp pre/post processing, as well as to processing logs via Windows ftp url shortcuts (Windows version only).
Several performance enhancements have been made to the retrieve HTML page titles feature.
When Analyzer zips up its reports, it now adds the files and directories using relative paths rather than absolute paths. This makes it easier to relocate zipped up reports. This is especially useful for zipping up virtual host style reports.
The default Windows operation system has been changed from Windows 3.1 to Windows 98. If Analyzer detects an unknown version of Windows within a log file entry, then the actual version will be assumed to be Windows 98.
Analyzer now includes only "true" errors within its error reports. That is, errors with a status code of 400 or greater.
Improvements have been made in the manner in which visitor sessions are tracked. These improvements have resulted in increased accuracy. You may notice slightly different session counts when comparing version 5.0 reports to those produce by previous versions of Analyzer.
Total visitor counts within the traffic reports now display the total number of unique visitors for the entire report. In previous versions of Analyzer, the total visitor counts were calculated by summing the unique visitor columns above them. For this reason, the traffic report total visitor counts produced by Analyzer version 5.0 may be significantly lower than those produced by previous versions.
Analyzer version 5.0 features an updated row sorting algorithm. You may notice slight differences in the ordering of rows that contain identical sort values when comparing version 5.0 reports to those produced by previous versions of Analyzer. You may also notice differences in certain summary report values, such as the least popular page.
FWASettings.txt (see below) has been updated with new search engines, robots and browsers.
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Unlike Analyzer version 3.74 for Solaris, version 5.0 for Solaris/Linux does not incorporate a GUI. All log
file processing must be carried out via the command-line interface. To view help on Analyzer usage,
enter the following command:
fwa50 -h
To process a log and produce a report, enter the following command:
fwa50 -l <log file name> -o report/index.html
The report will be created within a directory called report.
As previously mentioned, the Solaris/Linux edition is installed into <base directory>/Analyzer. All support files including languages and templates are installed into that directory. The PDF manual is installed into <base directory>/Analyzer/manual/Manual.pdf. The file config-setup.sh links in the binaries to /usr/bin/. Local configuration details such as schedule and registration information are stored in the user's HOME directory (ie ~/.). The Analyzer schedule is stored in a file named .schedule.txt and the schedule transcript log is stored in a file named .sched_log.txt.
Although Analyzer 5.0 will read settings files used with Analyzer version 3.74, it is recommended
that these setting files be upgraded to version 5.0. To do so, enter the following command:
fwa50 -r <old settings file name> -saveprefs <new settings file name>
Analyzer comes with report help cards, which provide additional information placed in HTML and PDF reports. These cards can be customized to provide more business-specific information. The help card files can be edited by clicking on the "Edit Card" button in the Statistics form (Windows version only), or they may be directly edited, as they are simple text files. (Some Help Cards are displayed on subsidiary reports, such as the individual Weekdays reports, so any update must be done by directly editing the file.)
Help card files can be found in the subdirectory "HelpCards" of the appropriate language directory (eg "English"). If the help card file doesn't exist in a non-English directory, the version in the English directory will be used. If you edit the help card via the Statistics form, then the appropriate file will be opened, based on the current Language setting in the settings file.
Various meta-tags are available in help card files, to improve the display. These are described in the file "Readme.txt" in the English\HelpCards directory.
There are two parameters that can be inserted into the Settings file that do not have GUI support (Windows version only). These are the "html_fontsize" and "html_font" parameters. These values can be entered to set the size and font of text displayed in HTML reports.
For example, the entries:
html_fontsize 2
html_font arial,helvetica
will result in the corresponding HTML tags being placed into the report output.
To change the first day appearing within the weekly traffic report, insert the "weekstartday" parameter into the Settings file. This parameter currently does not have GUI support but may do so in future versions of Analyzer (Windows version only). The range of possible values is: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 where 0 represents Sunday and 6 represents Saturday. The default value is 0.
For example, the entry:
weekstartday 1
will result in Monday appearing as the first day within the weekly traffic report.
The "weekstartday" parameter also affects the operation of the Week Before and This Week date range settings. For example if the parameter was set to 1, as above, then the This Week date range setting would process hits from Monday to Sunday of the current week.
When using output format "Word (RTF)", an up-to-date version of Microsoft Word is needed for the graphical images to be represented properly in Word. The graphs are correctly displayed on Word 2000 and Word X (for Macintosh OS X), but may be missing on earlier versions.
This file contains a customizable list of search engines, robots and browsers to be reported on by Analyzer. For each log file line, these lists will be searched sequentially to establish the relevant search engine, robot and browser for this hit.
To maximize performance, the most commonly found entries should be placed at the top of each list, and entries for which you have no interest can be omitted or commented out. The supplied file has been tuned for optimal performance and accuracy.
To maintain the integrity of the search, it is also important that the list is ordered such that the string being searched for is correctly matched to the entry. For example, early versions of the Netscape browser are identified in the log file by a string like "Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;)", whereas the Opera browser is identified by a string like "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95) Opera 5.11 [en]". This means that if you want to report on the use of Opera, then you may need to identify the Opera browser before the Netscape browser in your settings file. Otherwise, Opera hits may match the Netscape file stamp, and be incorrectly reported as Netscape. The default file supplied with Analyzer is optimized for speed and accuracy and the order of entries should not, in general, be changed.
Analyzer's sister product, Funnel Web Profiler, can be configured to extract traffic statistics from Analyzer via an in-built HTTP interface.
Compact databases created with Analyzer version 5.0 are not backwardly compatible with previous versions of Analyzer. That is, a compact database created with Analyzer version 5.0 will cause previous versions of Analyzer to crash on attempting to read in that database. Of course, compact databases created with previous versions of Analyzer are compatible with Analyzer version 5.0.
The various language files shipped with Analyzer contain some omissions in the translations. In these cases, English will be displayed by the new Language Builder (Windows version only) as well as by the reports. If you should encounter a problem with language translation, please contact Quest, and we will either ship you updated language files, or give you instructions on how you can update or customize the existing language files yourself.
When using the Analyzer compact database, if you process more than one log file not in date order, then the Session/Visitor statistics are reported incorrectly.
If you select a sort item which is not a column in the report, then the actual sort order of the report will be unpredictable.
When HTML reports are saved to disk with an extension other than .html and then viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6, the summary template category links may not work correctly. This is not a problem with Analyzer but rather a problem with Internet Explorer itself. The problem is associated with viewing HTML files that reside on disk and which do not have a .html extension. The problem does not occur if Internet Explorer accesses the same files from a web server.
Certain Analyzer settings are incompatible when used in conjunction with each other. These are as follows:
Analysis>Options>Multiple reports should not be used in conjunction with Virtual>Identify hosts by. If they are used together, then the Multiple reports setting will be ignored.
Tracking>Webcast Analysis>Enable webcast analysis should not be used in conjunction with Virtual>Identify hosts by. If they are used together, then the Enable webcast analysis setting will be ignored.
In webcast analysis mode, certain filter-like settings will only be applied to the standard report and not to the individual webcast reports that are produced. This is due to the fact that the processing of webcasts already involves special filter-like processing. The following settings will not be applied to the individual webcast reports:
Analysis>Options>Ignore>Zero byte transfers
Analysis>Date range>All dates (i.e. Date ranges drop-down)
Filters (i.e. All filters)
The title of the Maximum Concurrent Connections per Live Clip report appears incorrectly within Analyzer's streaming mode reports. The word "Live" is missing from all reported titles.
The Language Builder (Windows version only) window incorrectly contains a copy of Analyzer's main toolbar menu. The menu items within this menu do not function.
The Top Error Codes per Clip report is missing its Average row as well as its Others row.
Analyzer will crash when an invalid FTP download path is specified within Pre Process>Download>Path. The crash will occur after a diagnostic message is displayed indicating that the path is invalid.
The
Quest web site also contains an up-to-date FAQ.
Go to
http://www.quest.com/funnel_web/analyzer/tech.asp
to access this FAQ.
You
can subscribe to the Funnel Web Analyzer mailing list by sending email to
funnelweb-talk-request@listserve.com
with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of the email message. You will then receive an email response from
the mail list server, which you must respond to in order to confirm your subscription to the mail list.
To make a contribution to the mailing list, send email to
funnelweb-talk@listserve.com.
To unsubscribe from the Funnel Web Analyzer mailing list send email to funnelweb-talk-request@listserve.com with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line of the email message.
| By Email | |
| Sales and Marketing (including product upgrades) | info@quest.com |
| Support (not available for Freeware version) | support@quest.com |
| By phone | |
| USA and Canada | +1 949 754 8000 |
| UK | +41 1628 601000 |
| Germany | +49 6171 62710 |
| Australia | +61 3 9811 8000 |
| Canada | +1 905 804 9480 |
| By Fax | |
| USA and Canada | +1 949 754 8999 |
| On the Web | |
| Quest Home Page | http://www.quest.com |
| Funnel Web Analyzer Home Page | http://www.quest.com/funnel_web/analyzer |
| Funnel Web Analyzer Users' Site | http://www.funnelwebcentral.com |
| By Mail | |
| Write to Quest Software at | 8001 Irvine Center Drive Irvine, CA 92618 USA |