You're receiving this newsletter because
during the downloading or purchase of Sawmill, you checked the box
to join our mailing list. If you wish to be removed from this list,
please send an email, with the subject line of "UNSUBSCRIBE" to newsletter@sawmill.net
(please include the entire message, as the identifying information
is at the bottom).
News Sawmill 8.5.0 is now available. This is the final, production
release of the new Sawmill 8.5 version, which is a major upgrade to
Sawmill 8. It is also a free upgrade to Sawmill 8 (though
your profiles and databases will need to be converted). You can
download Sawmill 8.5.0 from http://sawmill.net/download.html
. Please send your feedback about your experiences with Sawmill 8.5.
Sawmill 7 users can upgrade to Sawmill 8.5 for half of the license
price; or if you have Premium Support, the upgrade is free. Major
features of Sawmill 8 include support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL
Server databases, real-time reporting, a completely redesigned web
interface, better multi-processor and multi-core support, and
role-based authentication control. Major new features of Sawmill 8.5
are described in this newsletter, below.
Get The Most Out Of Sawmill With Professional Services
Looking to get more out of your statistics from Sawmill? Running
short on time, but need the information now to make critical
business decisions? Our Professional Service Experts are available
for just this situation and many others. We will assist in the
initial installation of Sawmill using best practices; work with you
to integrate and configure Sawmill to generate reports in the
shortest possible time. We will tailor Sawmill to your environment,
create a customized solution, be sensitive to your requirements and
stay focused on what your business needs are. We will show you areas
of Sawmill you may not even be aware of, demonstrating these methods
will provide you with many streamlined methods to get you the
information more quickly. Often you'll find that Sawmill's deep
analysis can even provide you with information you've been after but
never knew how to reach, or possibly never realized was readily
available in reports. Sawmill is an extremely powerful tool for your
business, and most users only exercise a fraction of this power.
That's where our experts really can make the difference. Our Sawmill
experts have many years of experience with Sawmill and with a large
cross section of devices and business sectors. Our promise is to
very quickly come up with a cost effective solution that fits your
business, and greatly expand your ROI with only a few hours of fee
based Sawmill Professional Services. For more information, a quote,
or to speak directly with a Professional services expert contact consulting@flowerfire.com.
What's New In Sawmill 8.5
For this Sawmill Newsletter, we're skipping the usual Tips &
Techniques section, to give a comprehensive overview of the new
functionality in Sawmill 8.5.
Memory and Performance Improvements
The most noticeable change from Sawmill 8.1 to Sawmill 8.5 may be
the improved performance and memory usage. Sawmill 8.5 has a
completely new "under the hood" mechanism for accessing its files
and databases, and as a result, it uses memory more efficiently. It
adjusts its memory usage to the available system memory, so it won't
exceed the available memory (as Sawmill 8.1 sometimes could, causing
an error), and it won't use too little memory either (which
could cause slower performance). New memory management settings in
the Preferences allow you to tune Sawmill's memory usage, so it can
use more if it's the only thing running on a dedicated system, or
less if it has to play nice with a collection of other programs on
the same system.
Sawmill 8.5 also improves performance by building all indices and
cross-reference tables in a single pass over the main table, instead
of requiring a separate pass for each. This can greatly reduce
Sawmill's disk access during a database build, not only improving
performance but also reducing wear on the disk, and improving system
responsiveness.
The net result of these enhancements, and a slew of other
performance optimizations, is a speed improvement of 50%-100% in
most operations of Sawmill 8.5, compared to Sawmill 8.1.
Snapons / KPIs
Sawmill 8.5 adds a new feature called "Snapons." Snapons are
extremely flexible, and provide a method of modifying a
profile and its database according to instructions defined in a
standard module. For instance, you might attach a "downloads" snapon
to your profile, and it would immediately add a "downloads" field to
all your reports, showing the number of downloads of a particular
file from your site. Or you could attach a "bounce rate" snapon, and
you would get table columns and graphs showing the bounce rate for
your web site. Or you could attach a "concurrent connections"
snapon, and your reports would then show the maximum number of
concurrent connections or streams for each day, hour, etc. Most of
these were possible in Sawmill 8.1, but required extensive and
expert profile editing to implement. Snapons encapsulate this expert
information, allowing you add advanced functions to a profile
quickly and easily, without having to do manually all the low-level
edits required to implement them. Snapons can also be detached at
any time, and generally do not require the database to be rebuilt.
Snapons can add new database fields, add new reports, add columns to
existing reports, add database filters, and many other operations.
Snapons can be used to implement almost any Key Performance
Indicator (KPI). A number of snapons for common KPIs are included
with Sawmill 8.5.0; more will be added in the future. It is also
possible to create your own snapons; or our experts can create one
for you, to implement your favorite KPI.
The entire Sessions analysis in 8.5 is now implemented as a snapon;
among other benefits, this allows session information to be removed
from a profile in a single operation; that was an extremely
time-consuming and error-prone operation in 8.1 (involving hundreds
of manual profile edits). It is also possible to have multiple
session analyses in a single profile, by attaching more than one
instance of the Sessions snapon, for instance by user and by IP
address, which was not possible in 8.1. And like most snapons and
database filters, the database does not need to be rebuilt when
attaching or detaching Sessions; database filters act directly on
the database, and do not need the log data to be re-parsed, and
database fields required by snapons are added or removed dynamically
from the database as necessary.
Database Filters
Sawmill 8.5 introduces a new type of filter, Database Filters, which
operate directly on the main table of the database, after
data has been parsed and imported from the logs. These are usually
used in conjunction with Snapons: a snapon will often add a database
field, and add a database filter to populate it, and a report field
to report it.
Database Filters are similar to Log Filters, but instead of
operating during log parsing (like Log Filters), they operate after
the database is built, after all log data has been processed, even
after reports have been viewed. There are several important
advantages to this. First, database filters can request a particular
ordering of the data, so for instance they can request that
the data be fed to them in chronological order, or group by
IP address, or grouped by page views only. This allows types of
analysis which were nearly impossible in Sawmill 8.1, including
global concurrent-connection analysis. Secondly, database filters
can affect the database without requiring a rebuild of the log data.
The log data isn't needed at all, to run a database filter against
the database, so new functionality can be added to an existing
database without the time-consuming process of re-parsing, as would
be required by a log filter.
Improved Profile Navigation/Selection
Sawmill 8 features a greatly improved Profile menu, which replaces
the Config menu of earlier versions. This menu, which is available
from both configuration pages and Reports, shows all available
sections of the profile in a unified pull-down menu. Database Build
and Update, Reports, Database Info, and all Config pages are
available immediately from this menu.
The Admin menu link has also been enhanced, to allow immediate
access to all pages of Admin, from any page of the interface
(including Reports, Admin pages, and Config pages), without having
to go through the Profiles list.
Customizable Overview
The Overview report in Sawmill 8.5 has been enhanced to allow
unwanted fields to be hidden. In Sawmill 8.1, the Overview always
showed all database fields; in Sawmill 8.5, it now shows report
fields instead (which also provide additional flexibility in
formatting over database fields), and only those that are needed.
New Profile Wizard Enhancements
The New Profile Wizard has been enhanced in several ways, most
significantly through the addition of a dynamic search field in the
Log Format selection page. With support for more than 850 log
formats, and more being added all the time, it could be difficult to
find the particular format in Sawmill 8.1 if it didn't auto detect;
in 8.5, you can type a part of the name, and as you type, it will
show you a list of all matching plug-ins.
Many Other Improvements to the User Interface
We've been working to improve all aspects of the Sawmill user
interface. Most of these changes are small, but they add up to a
significant overall enhancement of the user experience.
One particular improvement involves the way we combine and cache our
JavaScript and style sheet files behind the scenes; this greatly
reduces the number of requests the browser has to send, which makes
the whole web interface snappier.
Email Reset of Forgotten Passwords
Sawmill 8.5 now includes a Password Reset functionality, which
allows a user to reset their own password, if they've forgotten it,
though a link emailed to that user's address. If your Sawmill
installation has a lot of users, this automates one of your most
frequent support tasks, saving you time.
Professional Services
This newsletter describes many new features of Sawmill 8.5,
including the new Snapons feature. If you need assistance with
configuring Sawmill 8.5, for instance creating a custom snapon for
campaign analysis or other KPI analysis, our Sawmill Experts can
help. Contact sales@sawmill.net for more
information.
![]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part1.05040507.03040403@flowerfire.com.gif")=})
![]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part2.07070901.05000100@flowerfire.com.png")=})
![]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part3.04040505.02040804@flowerfire.com.png")=})
![]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part4.00000104.04040706@flowerfire.com.png")=})
![]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part5.00020905.04070602@flowerfire.com.png")=})
![]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part6.07070601.05060704@flowerfire.com.png")=})
![]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part7.04050600.09010409@flowerfire.com.png")=})
![Password
Assistance]({=fileref("picts/docs/newsletter/2011-07-29/part8.01010400.08010000@flowerfire.com.png")=})