Usage Metrics, Hit Counts, and Google Analytics

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John Flack

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Dec 27, 2011, 4:18:21 PM12/27/11
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My client is asking us to give them "Hit Counts" for the pages in our public facing ADF application.  The old pre-ADF application gave them Hit Counts by analyzing the HTTP Access Logs.  But an ADF application gives numbers in the access logs that don't match the old numbers very well (besides the fact that the jspx pages in the new application don't match one to one with the old pages).  We're looking at some possibilities:
  • Override the ADF Controller to add some code that writes a log file every time we navigate to a new page.
  • Add a distinct graphic to each page and look at the HTTP Access Logs as before to see each access of one of the graphics.  This wouldn't capture events that don't rewrite the entire page - but I think this jives with what the client considers to be a "hit".
  • Use Google Analytics - this is what the client wants most, but does it work with ADF?  Has anyone tried it.

So what are your thoughts on best practices to gather usage statistics?

Maiko

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Dec 27, 2011, 5:06:02 PM12/27/11
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You can get this info from the ADF mbeans down to the TaskFlow level. They're available through EM but you can get access to them through any java app and extract the data for reporting. 

Not in front of the computer now but you should find everything in the Admin Guide. 

[]s
Maiko
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Rutwik Chandorkar

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Dec 28, 2011, 2:39:14 AM12/28/11
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Google analytics does work with ADF using the method Google prescribed in their docs for jsp. We have used it with 10g. 

Since u get the nice analytics web application to look at the stats for free, why build something custom.

regards - rutwik

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John Flack

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Dec 28, 2011, 8:17:38 AM12/28/11
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Maiko, I assume you are talking about the WebLogic Admin Guide?

 

In our ADF 10g application, we got “Requests Processed” from OC4J (using EM or dmstool), but Requests includes Partial Page requests, which isn’t quite the same thing as “Page Hits”.   I personally believe that this is actually a better measure of usage, but the client wants the old tried and true, and wants to compare the apples of the old non-ADF application to the oranges of the new one.  New one is the 10g one, but I plan to add the statistics gathering as part of an upgrade to 11gR2.

 

Rutwick – thanks for the information that Google Analytics works for ADF.  I was looking at the Javascript interface.  I thought that would be fairly easy to add to the application, but I wasn’t sure that it would tell Google the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  With your information, I’m looking at the JSP way of doing it.

Zeeshan Baig

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Dec 28, 2011, 2:24:12 PM12/28/11
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Hi,
I used Google analytics with ADF and it works fine ...all you need to
do is to call Google's javascript file on the template but I found few
draw backs
1. It takes 24 hours to see the statistics...which is difficult for
developer to test code and find issues...2. if you want to monitor
clicking events then you have to call API on your UI component using
af:clientListener3. You have to use different Google analytics profile
in your all environments e.g. development, testing and production....
same profile will pollute the statistics and it makes life harder to
maintain source code.
You can also take a look on some paid options like http://chartbeat.com/
Best Regards,Zeeshan BaigMail: zeeshan...@gmail.comBlog:
http://baigzeeshan.comLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/baigzeeshanTwitter:
http://twitter.com/baigsorclYouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/baigsorcl

On Dec 27, 3:18 pm, John Flack <Jo...@smdi.com> wrote:
> My client is asking us to give them "Hit Counts" for the pages in our
> public facing ADF application.  The old pre-ADF application gave them Hit
> Counts by analyzing the HTTP Access Logs.  But an ADF application gives
> numbers in the access logs that don't match the old numbers very well
> (besides the fact that the jspx pages in the new application don't match
> one to one with the old pages).  We're looking at some possibilities:
>
>    - Override the ADF Controller to add some code that writes a log file
>    every time we navigate to a new page.
>    - Add a distinct graphic to each page and look at the HTTP Access Logs
>    as before to see each access of one of the graphics.  This wouldn't capture
>    events that don't rewrite the entire page - but I think this jives with
>    what the client considers to be a "hit".
>    - Use Google Analytics - this is what the client wants most, but does it

Manoj kottam

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Dec 29, 2011, 11:11:29 AM12/29/11
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Hi,

One of our clients wanted to capture page views, product views, link
clicks via XITI (a French analytics firm). This analytics service
provided a different javascript for different type of events.
I created a couple of custom JSF(1.2) components which captures the
attributes with support for EL expressions that the analytics scripts
will require. The render class of the JSF component would resolve the
EL and a proper html javascript code is emitted to the UI.
This approach made it easier for us to capture different hits for the
same ADF page, because all our pages were dynamically generated.

Hope this helps!

On the side Note:
We tried the similar approach with Google Analytics, but it didn't had
enough documentation on capturing custom page views. All it was
showing was the hits to the same page even though the content is
different based on the request param. It could have worked better for
us if somehow we could clean the URLs at the apache layer. eg: "../
faces/Product.jspx?ID=1234" to "../faces/Product.jspx/1234". But even
with 11.1.2.1, it is very difficult to come up with a clean URL
pattern for ADF applications. I hate when ADF puts all its ctrl state
information in the request url :(... they need to come up with some
other approach. All the free analytics services rely on the clean URLs
for accurate page hits.


Thanks
Manoj

On Dec 27, 3:18 pm, John Flack <Jo...@smdi.com> wrote:
> My client is asking us to give them "Hit Counts" for the pages in our
> public facing ADF application.  The old pre-ADF application gave them Hit
> Counts by analyzing the HTTP Access Logs.  But an ADF application gives
> numbers in the access logs that don't match the old numbers very well
> (besides the fact that the jspx pages in the new application don't match
> one to one with the old pages).  We're looking at some possibilities:
>
>    - Override the ADF Controller to add some code that writes a log file
>    every time we navigate to a new page.
>    - Add a distinct graphic to each page and look at the HTTP Access Logs
>    as before to see each access of one of the graphics.  This wouldn't capture
>    events that don't rewrite the entire page - but I think this jives with
>    what the client considers to be a "hit".
>    - Use Google Analytics - this is what the client wants most, but does it

John Flack

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Dec 30, 2011, 8:07:39 AM12/30/11
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What you're talking about, Manoj, could REALLY screw with the hit counts if your application is showing a task flow in a region - it would look like the entire task flow is occurring on the same page.  Which it is - but not really.  That's why I proposed logging hits in a subclassed ADF Controller - it would see that you navigated to another page fragment even if it is in a region of a master page.  But Zeeshan and Rutwick - if you put the Javascript for Google Analytics on the fragment, will it understand that your user is viewing a "new" page?

Manoj kottam

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Dec 30, 2011, 11:03:57 AM12/30/11
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Not really John. The beauty of the custom component is you develop
once and it can be reused across pages and pagefragments alike.
So the main page would use the component with diff values for the
attributes, the same component on the individual page fragments would
generate a different hit based on the diff value. And since the actual
page is not refreshed when moving between page fragments of the
taskflow, no duplicate hits are recorded.

I understand its a pain to drag and drop the this custom component
even on each pagefragment of the taskflow. We did overcome this by
having a taskflow template and drop the component on the template.

Your idea of logging hits is excellent, but we also wanted to capture
other demographic information like where the user is from, the
browser, the OS, the avg time he spends on the page, etc.. which is
best handled by the analytics software.

Thanks
Manoj

mallelsu

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May 1, 2015, 10:09:51 AM5/1/15
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Hi Manoj,

we are implementing google analytics for our ADF application.
It works fine in page loads ,button clicks.

we need to trigger google event even on validation failures(af:messages)
is it possible with ADF?

i appreciate your help on this.

Florin Marcus

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May 29, 2015, 5:44:18 AM5/29/15
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I don't see how Google Analytics may bring you much use, especially when your ADF application is running on task flows using page fragments, making extensive use of partial page loading.

(i)One option we're currently using is to collect task flows access data, available through Dynamic Monitoring Service. Latest version of  ADF Performance Audit tool has a plugin that harvests this information and presents it though various graphs.

(ii)Another interesting functionality available with ADF 12c is Click History.

(iii)Third option - very powerful -  would be using Oracle Real User Experience (RUEI).

Thanks,
Florin
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