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You have created an awesome new BI solution it is superior to the incumbent system and it is full of cool new features, good job? But what if no one uses it...

Regardless of whether you are going for a Big Bang, Parallel, Phased or other adoption approach; knowing more than anecdotal evidence of who is accessing the system and using which features can often be a difficult task. For MOSS deployments the command line tool, LogParser offers an easy to use SQL-esque interface directly onto the log files of IIS. Here are some sample queries. The basic format for the queries is:

The different parameters that can be entered are detailed below and are shown when you launch LogParser without parameters:

Here are some which I have used:

• Basic Access Stats:
  • Logparser -i:iisw3c "SELECT Date, cs-username, COUNT (*) FROM C:\UsageStats\Source\W3SVC919260928\*.log WHERE cs-username <> NULL AND cs-uri-stem LIKE '/sites/Insight/%'  GROUP BY DATE, cs-username" -q:Off -e:1 -o:datagrid

• Access For Specific Pages:
  • Logparser -i:iisw3c "SELECT Date, cs-username, cs-uri-stem, COUNT (*) FROM C:\UsageStats\Source\W3SVC919260928\*.log WHERE cs-username <> NULL AND cs-uri-stem LIKE '/sites/Insight/%' GROUP BY DATE,cs-username,cs-uri-stem" -q:Off -e:1 -o:datagrid

• Access to Reports in Report Centre:
  • Logparser -i:iisw3c "SELECT DATE,cs-username,cs-uri-stem,COUNT (*) FROM C:\UsageStats\Source\W3SVC919260928\*.log WHERE (cs-username <> NULL) AND (cs-uri-stem LIKE '/sites/Insight/ReportCentre/ReportsLibrary/%.aspx' OR cs-uri-stem LIKE '/sites/Insight/ReportCentre/ReportsLibrary/%.aspx') GROUP BY DATE,cs-username,cs-uri-stem" -q:Off -e:1 -o:datagrid

To find out where the log files are, follow these steps:

1. Run Internet Information Services (Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools > IIS)
2. Find your Web site under the tree on the left.
3. Right-click on it and choose Properties.
4. On the Web site tab, you will see an option near the bottom that says "Active Log Format." Click on the Properties button.
5. At the bottom of the General Properties tab, you will see a box that contains the log file directory and the log file name. 

For example, if the window displayed the following values:

• Log file directory: C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles
• Log file name: W3SVC164203344\exyymmdd.log

Your FROM statement would be FROM C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\W3SVC164203344\*.log

Comments welcome,

John