Analog: Introduction


What is analog?
Analog is a program to measure the usage on your web server. It tells you which pages are most popular, which countries people are visiting from, which sites they tried to follow broken links from, and all sorts of other useful information.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. It's free.
How fast is it?
Very, very fast. I'm uncompressing and processing 28 million logfile lines in 20 minutes on a 266MHz chip: that's 1GB of data every five and a half minutes. (See sample.)
How big a logfile can it cope with?
It depends on your system. But I know of one site using it on logfiles of over 700 million lines (c. 70GB).
Can it speak different languages?
Yes. You can have the output in any of 35 different languages.
How configurable is it?
Very. The default output will be satisfactory for most people, but there are hundreds of options producing 32 different reports for those who want to do things differently.
Is it easy to install?
Yes. There are executables available for several platforms including Windows (95/NT and later) and Mac, and it compiles straight out of the box on most other platforms.
What platforms does it run on?
Almost any. It's written in standard C, so should compile on almost any machine with a C compiler. It's known to work under Windows (all versions), DOS, Mac, all Unix & Linux, OS/2, OpenVMS, Acorn RiscOS, BeOS, Mac OS X, NeXTSTEP, and several mainframes. And probably more I forgot to mention!
What web servers does it work with?
Any. The server just has to write its logfile in a form analog can read. Analog can read all standard formats, and the user can specify customised formats.
Can I see some samples?
Sure. Have a look at my statistics pages.

Go to the analog home page.

Stephen Turner
University of Cambridge Statistical Laboratory

Need help with analog? Use the analog-help mailing list.

Page last modified: 06-Feb-01