Papers in PDF format

The Aria Recording and Reporting System
The Aria system is a high performance and fully scaleable system for recording web
activity data, storing this data for real-time and persistent access, analysis of this data for
reporting purposes and presentation of the information to third party application
consumers of this information. The Aria system is comprised of 5 discrete object modules
linked through an architecture optimized for performance, scaleability and flexibility.
The following describes each module and the functions it performs, as well as the enabling
technology and the resulting benefits.
Aria.monitor
Aria.monitor is a flexible shared library that runs dynamically on a Web Server and
monitors all of the traffic between Web Clients and the subject Server. It supplies the
underlying activity information that is essential to understanding how a Website is being
utilized. A typical server log file does not capture all of the information that is captured by
Aria.monitor. Standard log files do not capture “cookie” information or post information
(HTML Form field information). They also cannot track transaction time, path transaction
data and other desirable parameters.
Aria.monitor can run on multiple servers and over multiple sites. It can send messages to
multiple recorders effectively creating duplicate sites for fault tolerance. A future Release
will enable Aria.monitor to also write to its own logfiles as a fail-safe against dropped
messages or recorder crashes. Since it is part of the site server it can accommodate
changing volume requirements during peak surges of activity, at least as well as the server
resources allow. It streams all of the client/server traffic information, including user
cookie profiles, form field posted data, and all data ordinarily written to a log file to the
Aria.recorder module. An open connection to Aria.recorder essentially maintains an open
pipe to improve performance.
Aria.monitor records all hits on a page. A hit consists of each pointed element clicked on
a page, and therefore, a single page can have multiple hits. Typically, each clicked image
is treated as a hit, which is necessary to measure the effectiveness of multiple
advertisements placed on a single page. Hot links to other pages are not treated as a hit
until they are clicked on by a user.
Aria.monitor streams all of the Request, Response and Post data between the Web Client
and the Server to the Aria.recorder. It also captures meta data with regard to the
document being transferred between the Web Client and the Server.
Aria.monitor runs as a .dll on a Windows NT Server or as a .so file on a Unix server. It is
automatically available when a server is booted, and is linked to the server through its
API..
Captured Data
______________________________________________________________________________
The Aria Architecture Page 15 Andromedia, Inc.
White Paper July 1996