Our second choice is WebTrends Enterprise Suite 2.1; while it doesn't match Site Server in terms of functionality, it compensates with its ease of use. Enterprise Suite can create comprehensive visit-analysis reports, and also does a powerful job highlighting keywords from users' search queries. Enterprise Suite is a great value for a company that doesn't need the depth of the Site Server package.

Microsoft Corp. Site Server 3.0

Starting at $1,239, Microsoft's Site Server 3.0 gives Web administrators the most functionality for the lowest cost. Our testing focused on Usage Analyzer, which is just one component of the Site Server package. Even with it's economical price, Site Server seems to handle all the log-analysis functions any other package offers. Microsoft also includes knowledge management and publishing features as part of the regular package, and transactional analysis in the Commerce Edition. (We did not test these features for this article.)

At first, we were somewhat overwhelmed by Site Server's configuration and management features. Site Server 3.0 uses Microsoft's wizards from installation through configuration. The most difficult thing to adapt to was the inclusion of a separate database wizard to set up the database, import wizard to set up the import and report writer to run a report. Even though it makes sense to break up the functions with individual tools, Microsoft is the only vendor that does so. Site Server runs exclusively on Windows NT, as do two of the other three packages we tested; net.Analysis runs on Unix as well as NT.

The accuracy of Site Server's organizational lookups is one key reason we put the package at the head of the pack. When you request a report to determine who is looking at the Web site, most products query an internal database that contains InterNIC WhoIs information. While this speeds performance, you may find that IP addresses registered after the product was shipped cannot be linked to an organization.

To avoid this, Site Server queries InterNIC directly for WhoIs information. While this slows response the first time the software runs, the information is cached for future use, allowing for quicker imports on subsequent requests. (The cache expires on a regular basis and can be configured by the administrator.) The distinct advantage of querying InterNIC is that the organizational information is updated regularly, making reports more accurate. No other product has a mechanism in place to update the organizational database that ships with the product, aside from regularly scheduled, separately priced updates.

Site Server includes an Access database run-time engine, but we chose to use SQL Server as our database for reports based on historical data. After we installed the latest ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) drivers, Site Server led us through the SQL Database setup, even determining how large our data store should be based on the size of our log file. Although this seems elementary, don't take it for granted: We had to run Marketwave's Hit List four times before we created a data store large enough to support our import. Once Site Server was installed, it was a snap to run reports, set up filters to improve performance and focus on any point of interest in the logs. The filter setup is included within the report wizard.

All the enterprise-level products we tested can be connected to an ODBC-compliant database. Importing log files into one of these databases gives administrators several performance advantages and allows them to tie log information to other customer information in their databases. For a more detailed explanation of the differences between enterprise-level products and standard log-analysis tools, see "Enterprise Solutions vs. Workgroup Solutions," on page 82.

Site Server's reports go beyond the scope of any competitor's. Most log-analysis tools break out domain information into the top six U.S. domain names and then international information. You may see that the Web site had X number of requests from .com domains, X number from .org domains and so on. Site Server reports on all this and adds ISPs to the mix; it also details the leading requests from each top-level domain, including Canada, Canadian ISPs and other international users.