Teaching:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2005/06 - Gruppe G3 - Aufgabe 3
Topic: Webserver Logfile Visualization
Application Area Analysis
Dataset Analysis
The Common Logfile Format
According to the World Wide Web Consortium the Common Logfile Format is as follows:
remotehost rfc931 authuser [date] "request" status bytes
remotehost: Remote hostname (or IP number if DNS hostname is not available, or if DNSLookup is Off.
rfc931: The remote logname of the user.
authuser: The username as which the user has authenticated himself.
[date]: Date and time of the request.
"request": The request line exactly as it came from the client.
status: The HTTP Status Code returned to the client.
bytes: The content-length of the document transferred. [1][W3C]
Project Example Data
The example data our group is using the Combined Logfile Format (describtion taken from [3][Apa], which adds two further Positions:
Referer: This gives the site that the client reports having been referred from
Agent: The User-Agent HTTP request header. This is the identifying information that the client browser reports about itself.
One entry in the logfile looks as follows:
128.131.167.8 - - [16/Oct/2005:09:56:22 +0200] "GET /skins/monobook/external.png HTTP/1.1" 200 1178 "http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php/Main_Page" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
remotehost: 128.131.167.8
rfc931: -
authuser: -
[date]: [16/Oct/2005:09:56:22 +0200]
"request": "GET /skins/monobook/external.png HTTP/1.1"
status: 200
bytes: 1178
Referer: "http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php/Main_Page"
Agent: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
The whole example Data File can be downloaded here.
Datatypes
Target Group Analysis
Aim of the Visualization
Designproposal
References
[1][W3C] World Wide Web Consortium, Logging Control In W3C httpd. Created at: July, 1995. Retrieved at: November 16, 2005. http://www.w3.org/Daemon/User/Config/Logging.html#common-logfile-format.