Collecting metrics - logs and tags

[Todd]

There are two basic method of collecting metrics. Server logs or page
tagging. The W3C has defined a standard log format (http://www.w3.org/
Daemon/User/Config/Logging.html#common-logfile-format) that has the
format:

remotehost rfc931 authuser [date] "request" status bytes

This information is summarized in the analytics reports.

Services like Google Analytics use page tagging which is typically a
small amount of JavaScript embedded into each web page (typically in
the footer) that sends information to a collection service. Since the
reporting is done from the browser additional information is available
for collection.

The folks at PDS have surveyed different reporting tools. Here is
there summary:

http://groups.google.com/group/hdmc-analytics/web/Survey-of-reporting-products.pdf

-Todd-