Does anyone know of an efficient way to read Apache log files/Orbeon Server log files as XML from an Orbeon pipeline?

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Does anyone know of an efficient way to read Apache log files/Orbeon Server log files as XML from an Orbeon pipeline?

Gary Cornelius
I would like to read server log files and create a view of the application usage derived from these within my Orbeon application.

Firstly, I tried to process my Apache server logs into XML using XSLT2 unparsed text function but this fails due to a currently documented issue using the unparsed-text() from Orbeon. Even if this gets fixed soon it is probably not the best way to do it as XSLT is not going to be the most efficient to write the logs into XML.

There do appear to be lots of libraries for Perl and PHP applications to process log files for auditing usage and user analytics but I am not sure about the the best ways to integrate any of those yet. I did manage to integrate XML output from AWSTATS and this gets me some of the way but not all of it as in some cases I need to read the actual logs themselves rather than a higher level snapshot. I noticed something on using ACK for fast search in files at http://avernet.blogspot.com/2009/08/ack-powerful-command-line-search.html that sounded promising but I wasn't sure how that could get intregrated into Orbeon and for this purpose.

Does anyone have any tips or pointers on what might work best?


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Gary Cornelius
Partner, Eleven Informatics LLP
www.elevenllp.com
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Re: Does anyone know of an efficient way to read Apache log files/Orbeon Server log files as XML from an Orbeon pipeline?

Alessandro  Vernet
Administrator
Gary,

I imagine that you would like the XML to be structured (i.e. not just
a sequence of <line> elements). If the tools you found can do this,
maybe you can run them daily as a batch process (cron), and have the
result pushed to eXist, so you can then query this data with XQuery
from XForms?

Alex

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Gary C <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> I would like to read server log files and create a view of the application
> usage derived from these within my Orbeon application.
>
> Firstly, I tried to process my Apache server logs into XML using XSLT2
> unparsed text function but this fails due to a currently documented issue
> using the unparsed-text() from Orbeon. Even if this gets fixed soon it is
> probably not the best way to do it as XSLT is not going to be the most
> efficient to write the logs into XML.
>
> There do appear to be lots of libraries for Perl and PHP applications to
> process log files for auditing usage and user analytics but I am not sure
> about the the best ways to integrate any of those yet. I did manage to
> integrate XML output from AWSTATS and this gets me some of the way but not
> all of it as in some cases I need to read the actual logs themselves rather
> than a higher level snapshot. I noticed something on using ACK for fast
> search in files at
> http://avernet.blogspot.com/2009/08/ack-powerful-command-line-search.html
> that sounded promising but I wasn't sure how that could get intregrated into
> Orbeon and for this purpose.
>
> Does anyone have any tips or pointers on what might work best?
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/Does-anyone-know-of-an-efficient-way-to-read-Apache-log-files-Orbeon-Server-log-files-as-XML-from-an-tp1584330p1584330.html
> Sent from the Orbeon Forms (ops-users) mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> --
> You receive this message as a subscriber of the [hidden email] mailing list.
> To unsubscribe: mailto:[hidden email]
> For general help: mailto:[hidden email]?subject=help
> OW2 mailing lists service home page: http://www.ow2.org/wws
>
>


--
Orbeon Forms - Web forms, open-source, for the Enterprise -
http://www.orbeon.com/
My Twitter: http://twitter.com/avernet


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Re: Does anyone know of an efficient way to read Apache log files/Orbeon Server log files as XML from an Orbeon pipeline?

Gary Cornelius
Thanks Alex.  I will run a cron job/scheduler as suggested, I will structure chunks with with XSLT unparsed- text and xsl:analyze-string for time being to get exactly what I need outside Orbeon then put into Exist and XQuery from XFORMs in Orbeon as suggested.

Essentially what I am trying to do is use this process for auditing the application usage and the results need to be at least as structured as the path-info descriptions in the page-flow.xml and give access to the other standard information you get in server logs. It is important I get the final results as XML with hooks and handles on everything described so I can easily style results in the interface... Also, I need the ability to requests log results from a dropdown of whatever options I have as path-info described in the application page-flow.xml.

The biggest challenges seems to be the large size of the log files and the challenge of finding a way of moving this analytics logic inside Orbeon and as close to the page-flow.xml as possible.

--
Gary Cornelius
Partner, Eleven Informatics LLP
www.elevenllp.com
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Re: Re: Does anyone know of an efficient way to read Apache log files/Orbeon Server log files as XML from an Orbeon pipeline?

Alessandro  Vernet
Administrator
Gary,

We don't use the command line interface much, and if you extend what
it currently does and are willing to contribute those changes, we'll
look into putting them into the codebase.

Alex

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Gary C <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> Thanks Alex.  I will run a cron job/scheduler as suggested, I will structure
> chunks with with XSLT unparsed- text and xsl:analyze-string for time being
> to get exactly what I need outside Orbeon then put into Exist and XQuery
> from XFORMs in Orbeon as suggested.
>
> Essentially what I am trying to do is use this process for auditing the
> application usage and the results need to be at least as structured as the
> path-info descriptions in the page-flow.xml and give access to the other
> standard information you get in server logs. It is important I get the final
> results as XML with hooks and handles on everything described so I can
> easily style results in the interface... Also, I need the ability to
> requests log results from a dropdown of whatever options I have as path-info
> described in the application page-flow.xml.
>
> The biggest challenges seems to be the large size of the log files and the
> challenge of finding a way of moving this analytics logic inside Orbeon and
> as close to the page-flow.xml as possible.
> --
> View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/Does-anyone-know-of-an-efficient-way-to-read-Apache-log-files-Orbeon-Server-log-files-as-XML-from-an-tp1584330p1587121.html
> Sent from the Orbeon Forms (ops-users) mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> --
> You receive this message as a subscriber of the [hidden email] mailing list.
> To unsubscribe: mailto:[hidden email]
> For general help: mailto:[hidden email]?subject=help
> OW2 mailing lists service home page: http://www.ow2.org/wws
>
>


--
Orbeon Forms - Web forms, open-source, for the Enterprise -
http://www.orbeon.com/
My Twitter: http://twitter.com/avernet


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Re: Re: Does anyone know of an efficient way to read Apache log files/Orbeon Server log files as XML from an Orbeon pipeline?

Alessandro  Vernet
Administrator
Gary,

Sorry... wrong thread. I meant to say that an option is to import the
files in the embedded eXist, or in your own eXist deployed separately.
You'll then have less trouble running queries on large files, or even
a large amount of large files.

Alex

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 3:44 PM, Alessandro Vernet <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Gary,
>
> We don't use the command line interface much, and if you extend what
> it currently does and are willing to contribute those changes, we'll
> look into putting them into the codebase.
>
> Alex
>
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Gary C <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Alex.  I will run a cron job/scheduler as suggested, I will structure
>> chunks with with XSLT unparsed- text and xsl:analyze-string for time being
>> to get exactly what I need outside Orbeon then put into Exist and XQuery
>> from XFORMs in Orbeon as suggested.
>>
>> Essentially what I am trying to do is use this process for auditing the
>> application usage and the results need to be at least as structured as the
>> path-info descriptions in the page-flow.xml and give access to the other
>> standard information you get in server logs. It is important I get the final
>> results as XML with hooks and handles on everything described so I can
>> easily style results in the interface... Also, I need the ability to
>> requests log results from a dropdown of whatever options I have as path-info
>> described in the application page-flow.xml.
>>
>> The biggest challenges seems to be the large size of the log files and the
>> challenge of finding a way of moving this analytics logic inside Orbeon and
>> as close to the page-flow.xml as possible.
>> --
>> View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/Does-anyone-know-of-an-efficient-way-to-read-Apache-log-files-Orbeon-Server-log-files-as-XML-from-an-tp1584330p1587121.html
>> Sent from the Orbeon Forms (ops-users) mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
>>
>> --
>> You receive this message as a subscriber of the [hidden email] mailing list.
>> To unsubscribe: mailto:[hidden email]
>> For general help: mailto:[hidden email]?subject=help
>> OW2 mailing lists service home page: http://www.ow2.org/wws
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Orbeon Forms - Web forms, open-source, for the Enterprise -
> http://www.orbeon.com/
> My Twitter: http://twitter.com/avernet
>


--
Orbeon Forms - Web forms, open-source, for the Enterprise -
http://www.orbeon.com/
My Twitter: http://twitter.com/avernet


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