Analysing SharePoint Logs
Today's question:
Hi Eli! Do you have a recommended tool for problem and usage reporting? I have used WebTrends in the past but I'm not sure this will work well in SP. Your advice and experience is appreciated! Michelle
Hi Michelle,
Basically, the way(s) SharePoint serves pages -- and therefore the IIS logs -- varies from page to page, for example the way a file in a DocLib can be referred to either with a complete path (they way you or I would) or via a owssrv.dll with parameters (which is how WSS generates its links). I described the basic problem here: http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2005/01/13/352214.aspx
In addition, when accessing a file directly with a WebDAV INVOKE, nothing will be recorded in the IIS logs, so tracking document usage is particularly troublesome.
The best article on the subject appears here:
There is a handy report pack just released:
This pair of blogs discusses how to get the logs into SQL and pull out some meaningful stats:
Hope this helps,
Eli.