Now that you have installed everything needed to run Bolero, and are familiarized with the components of Bolero, this chapter will explain:
The information logged from WebSTAR is entered into the appropriate tables in the Bolero database. When you report on the information captured by Bolero, these tables are searched for information that matches the criteria of the query.
You can either scroll through the descriptions, or click on one of the table titles below to go directly to that description.
Click here to go directly to WebSTAR Considerations.
An agent is the type of web browser used by your Web site users. This table contains a row for each web browser used to access your site. Bolero adds new agents to this table automatically the first time the browser is used with your site.
Note
Some web browsers are identified by a code name instead of the commercial name of the browser. For example, Netscape browsers use "Mozilla" as their agent name.
The information from the Agents table is summarized into the Agents Summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
The Client Domains table contains detailed information on each client domain, derived from the domain name that accesses the Web server.
The information from the Client Domains table is summarized into the Client Domains summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
The Domain Names table contains detailed information on each domain name that accesses the Web server. This information is summarized to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated. The following terminology is used to refer to domain names, or parts of domain names.
Syntax Example Domain Name www.everyware.com, watt.eng.uwaterloo.edu Sub-Domain everyware.com, eng.uwaterloo.edu Reversed Sub-Domain com.everyware, edu.uwaterloo.eng Client Domain com, edu
For IP Addresses that cannot be resolved, the IP Address will be broken down in a slightly different manner.
Syntax Example Domain Name 205.189.228.106 Sub-Domain 205.189.228 Reversed Sub-Domain 205.189.228 (notice that the address is not reversed) Client Domain Unresolved
The information from the Domain Names table is summarized into the Domain Names summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
Some agents pass e-mail address (the address of the user/client) information to the Web server. This information is stored in the EMail table.
The information from the EMail table is summarized into the EMail summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
When an agent asks a Web server for a particular page, there are a few 'methods' that can be used to access that page. If the page has not been previously accessed by the agent, a 'get' method is issued to request the entire contents of the page. A 'conditional get' asks "has this page changed since the last time it was accessed?" If the answer is 'no', the page does not need to be sent again, since the agent already has a copy of that page in its local cache.
The information from the Methods table is summarized into the Methods summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
PathArgs are path arguments, that appear in the URL after a dollar ($) sign.
Example:
http://www.mywebserver1.com/<path to Tango folder>/Tango/ Tango.acgi$/tango/bolero/Reports/cdom.qry?function= search&webServerID=...
The information from the PathArgs table is summarized into the PathArgs summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
Bolero attempts to identify two types of referers: external and internal. If a user accesses a page at your site after linking to it from another site, this other site is called an external referer. When a user hits a page on your site after clicking a link from another page on your site, this previous page is considered an internal referer. Bolero identifies internal referers by checking if the referring URL begins with 'http://' + webServer, where webServer is the registered domain name of a Web server entered in the Bolero Settings file.
The information from the Referers table is summarized into the Referers summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
The Results table contains the result code, such as 'ERR!', generated by the Web server for a hit.
The information from the results table is summarized into the Results summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
The Reversed Sub Domains table contains detailed information on each subdomain, derived from the domain name that accesses the Web server.
Example of a reversed subdomain:
Syntax Example Domain Name www.everyware.com, watt.eng.uwaterloo.edu Sub-Domain everyware.com, eng.uwaterloo.edu Reversed Sub-Domain com.everyware, edu.uwaterloo.eng Client Domain com, edu
Reversed sub domains are implemented to make working with sub domains simpler. For example, if you want all data from '*.everyware.com', except data from '*.info.everyware.com', you could exclude the reverse sub domain 'com.everyware.info' in your queries.
The information from the Agents table is summarized into the Reversed SubDomains summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
SearchArgs are arguments that appear in a URL directly after a question (?) mark.
Example:
http://www.mywebserver1.com/<path to Tango folder>/Tango/ Bolero/Reports/cdom.qry?function=form&webServerID=1Where 'function=form&webServerID=1' is the Search Argument.
The information from the SearchArgs table is summarized into the SearchArgs summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
URLs are Uniform Resource Locators. These are used to locate files on various servers. The URLs table contains detailed information on each URL that is accessed by users of your web site.
The information from the URLs table is summarized into the URLs summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
The Web Servers Table contains a unique entry for each Web server logged by Bolero.
The information from the Web Servers table is summarized into the Web Servers summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
The Web Users table contains detailed information on the Web server, which is provided by registration, or authentication.
The information from the Web Users table is summarized into the Web Users Summary table to allow a variety of statistical reports to be generated.
Once Bolero is actively monitoring your Web server, there are a few things you should know.
For every "hit" received on a WebSTAR server, a log entry is generated by WebSTAR and broadcast via AppleEvents. Bolero initiates a Program Linking connection to each WebSTAR server, capturing all these events.
The WebSTAR server also broadcasts a null event every 15 to 30 seconds, which Bolero uses as a 'heartbeat' to monitor the active status of the Web server. This is especially useful for low activity servers whose log information arrives infrequently.
If you alter the way that your WebSTAR server logs information, these changes will be reflected in Bolero. Any changes made at the WebSTAR server to disable logging of selected information will have the same effect as setting a value to 'Off' in the Logging Information subsection of the Bolero Settings file.
Note
If you alter the way that your WebSTAR server logs information, these changes will be reflected in Bolero. Any changes made at the WebSTAR server to disable logging of selected information will have the same effect as setting a value to 'Off' in the Logging Information subsection of the Bolero Settings file.
Once Bolero is up and running, and you have verified that it is passing the WebSTAR log information to the database, you are free to disable the generation of log files at the WebSTAR server. This will not only free up disk space on your Web server, but also reduce the workload on the server.
By default, Bolero automatically performs domain name resolution on IP addresses received during logging, so you are free to disable domain name resolution at the WebSTAR server. By disabling domain name resolution at the WebSTAR server, you will notice a significant performance improvement.