Re: Another Logging Question

on 24/02/03 3:30 AM, Matt Honeycutt (matt@xpodesigns.com) wrote: > I'd like for my counter/logger to be fairly scalable, so I'm toying with two > possible implementation routes: what are you logging (what kind of data) > 1. Have the counter dump visitor info to a text file, then run a cron job on > that nightly to process the data and perform a full analysis. Archiving a report, rather than archiving the raw data can save lots of space, and yes a cron would be the best way. the downside is that the report is the ONLY record of the data. > 2. Have the counter dump the visitor info into a DB (probably MySQL), then > process the data whenever the administrator wants to view his stats. On-demand stats will use up more space long-term than generating monthly reports or something... but there are obvious benefits. The biggest issue IMHO is that if your site is processing a large amount of data, processing it over and over and over on demand is going to burden the server. > Anyone have any suggestions or considerations on which method would work > better? Is there something else I should do instead? If you're going to be dealing with large amounts of data, a combination. Perhaps perform a monthly analysis and consolidation of data to keep on demand / real time processing to the current month only... However, make sure you keep the long-term data SOMEWHERE, in case you want to change the reporting, method, or analyse the data a different way. If we're only talking about a counter on a few pages, real-time should be fine. Justin