Analyzing the Logs: How We Tested

We tested all products on a Dell Computer Corp. Optiplex Pentium II running at 300 MHz with 256 MB of RAM under the Windows NT Server 4.0 operating system. All logs were imported into Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server 6.5 database.

We tested each product under two performance benchmarks. In both performance tests, each product imported the 100-MB log file into the SQL database. The first time through, we asked each product to import the log file, but not to look up page titles or DNS lookups. (We called this our basic import.) After clearing all databases, we imported the log file again, this time performing title and DNS lookups. (This was our full import.)

Page title lookups require the software to contact the Web server and retrieve the page titles from the actual HTML pages. DNS lookups take each IP address and attempt to resolve the domain name. Although title and DNS lookups can yield valuable information, as you can see from the results of the two performance tests we conducted, it may take twice as long, or even longer, to run these imports.