A Portal to a Portal

Just working to show how WebSphere Portal's Site Analytics service works, in terms of generating logs in the NCSA Combined Log format that can then be analysed by an appropriate tool, such as the free-as-in-beer GPL tool AWStats, Nihuo  or a chargeable product/service such as WebTrends.

I'd previously set this up in an earlier release ( I even found a developerWorks forum post from myself back in 2006 ), but had forgotten precisely how to do it.

I confused myself by reading the formal documentation so ended up hacking around and stop/starting the portal several times.

In the end, the trick was to: -

a) Amend C:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\PortalServer\config\SiteAnalyzerLogService.properties and add/change: -

SiteAnalyzerFileHandler.fileName=logs/$APPSERVER_NAME/sa.log
SiteAnalyzerPageLogger.isLogging=true
SiteAnalyzerPortletLogger.isLogging=true
SiteAnalyzerSessionLogger.isLogging=true

( there are a number of other isLogging parameters to choose from )

b) Push the updated properties into the portal configuration, using the command: -

ConfigEngine.bat update-properties

from the directory C:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\ConfigEngine.

c) Restart the portal

Once this has been done, you can see/change the properties by logging into the WebSphere Application Server administration console ( https://localhost:10041/ibm/console ) and then navigating to Resource > Resource environment providers > WP SiteAnalyzerLogService > Custom properties as per the screenshot.

Having restarted the portal, and logged in, I now see data such as: -

192.168.44.1 - - [17/Dec/2008:11:33:14 +0000] "GET /Page/6_CGAH47L0082M302B566VO730M6/null HTTP/1.1" 200 -1 "" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008111318 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.4" "pSite=http%3A//www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/services/learning/ites.wss/us/en%3FpageType%3Dcourse_description%26courseCode%3DPW510;sasidp=S420311311229505852077;90130510_clogin=l=1229505853&v=1&e=1229514686475;CoreID6=62742661401312295058533;ibmSurvey=1229505848905;sauidp=U420311311229505852077;satst=test"
192.168.44.1 - - [17/Dec/2008:11:33:14 +0000] "GET /Portlet/5_CGAH47L0082M302B566VO730E4/Login_Portlet?PortletPID=5_CGAH47L0082M302B566VO730E4&PortletMode=View&PortletState=Normal HTTP/1.1" 200 -1 "http://stargate.uk.ibm.com/Page/6_CGAH47L0082M302B566VO730M6/null" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008111318 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.4" "pSite=http%3A//www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/services/learning/ites.wss/us/en%3FpageType%3Dcourse_description%26courseCode%3DPW510;sasidp=S420311311229505852077;90130510_clogin=l=1229505853&v=1&e=1229514686475;CoreID6=62742661401312295058533;ibmSurvey=1229505848905;sauidp=U420311311229505852077;satst=test"

being logged to C:\IBM\WebSphere\wp_profile\logs\WebSphere_Portal\sa.log.

I can now use my log analyser tool to see what's going on within my portal.

I'm actually using AWStats on my Ubuntu host whilst the portal is running within a VMware image.

I'll use the AWStats documentation as well as this excellent article from Stefan Liesche on developerWorks.