This section focuses on:
- what Bolero is
- what it does
- how you can view the data that Bolero provides
Bolero is a server application that collects log information from single or multiple WebSTAR servers in real time and writes the information to an industry standard SQL database.
Bolero provides detailed summaries of this information arranged by hour, day, week, and month. This data can be accessed instantly, without having to wait for log files to be prepared and analyzed..
With Bolero, you can:
- capture all the log information from your Web server, reducing the load on your WebSTAR server if you turn off its logging function
- post­p;process your existing WebSTAR log files
- resolve domain names automatically, reducing the load on your WebSTAR server if you turn off its Domain Name resolution function
- create and execute custom SQL scripts, making it easier to summarize additional information that is important to you
- limit the information you log, thereby controlling the amount of information collected and reducing the resources required (both hard disk and CPU) for the Bolero database
Other utilities post-process WebSTAR log files into text-based reports. If the reports don't suit your purposes, you need to reset parsing parameters and reprocess the files, which is a time consuming process. If the log files contain data only for the last two days, you can only report on the last two days.
Unlike these utilities, Bolero writes data in real time to a SQL database. From this database, you can view the data in an infinite number of ways, comparing data from different time periods and producing only the reports you want to produce. You can expand the data by gathering information from different Web servers (configured collectively as a site) or by post-processing log files from other servers.
By being built on industry standard SQL databases, Bolero allows you to use any available SQL query tools to expand upon the data analysis included with Bolero.
Bolero comes with many predefined Tango query documents (please refer to your Tango documentation for more information on query documents). These documents are used by your Web server to report on the Bolero data. You can start using the Tango documents after you have run Bolero and collected data from your Web server.
Once Bolero is installed, all reports and documentation on how to use the reports (which are Tango query documents) can be found online on your Web server (see Bolero home page).
You can use the following URL (substituting what is in brackets) to reach the Bolero Reports home page:
http://www.myserver1.com/<path to Tango folder>/Tango/ Bolero/Reports/reports.htm
If you need additional reporting capabilities, you can use Tango to create your own query documents, or any DAL or ODBC compliant query tools. For example, you could retrieve data using Microsoft Query; then, for analysis, graph it in Microsoft Excel. To create custom, print-ready reports you could use a tool such as CLEAR:Access by Sterling Software, Inc.