Microsoft Windows Media Resource Kit (Pro-Resource Kit)

The script Fabrikam used to create the activity snapshot does not allow them to do any further analysis of the data in the log files. For more advanced reporting, it is recommended that you store your log file in a database. Storing the file in a database will allow you to track trends, perform historical analysis, and answer follow-up questions. Fabrikam decided to use the server log files for weekly activity snapshots, and to save publishing point logs to a database for monthly reports on content popularity.

Once the files are in the database, they can use the information in the log files to ascertain the following information about the usage reports:

• For each piece of content streamed, on average how long did users stay connected?

  This number can be attained by grouping the statistics by their s-contentpath value and then calculating the average of the x-duration field for each group. Comparing this value against the known length of content can also provide a percentage value as to how much of the content users received before disconnecting from the stream.

• For each publishing point, how much time was spent buffering content?

  This number can be attained by grouping the statistics by their cs-uri-stem value and then summing the value of the c-totalbuffertime field for each group. This provides a measure of how stable the stream was between the clients and the server.

• For each client, how many stream errors were encountered?

  This number can be attained by sorting statistics on the c-playerid value, and then summing the value of the c-pkts-lost-client for each group. This value shows how many data packets were lost that could not be recovered through error correction or resend requests. This statistic can be a good predictor of client satisfaction with the service.