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Sawmill Newsletter

April 15, 2010

Welcome to the Sawmill Newsletter!

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 8.1.4 shipped on March 30, 2010. This is an bug-fix release--it fixes a number of bugs. This release is free to existing Sawmill 8 users. It is recommended for anyone who is experiencing problems with Sawmill 8.1.3 or earlier. Sawmill 8.1.3 has a known issue with some Windows installations. It requires the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 redistributable package, but does not install it. Most Windows systems have this package already, but for those that don't, Sawmill will not run. If you are experiencing this problem, upgrade to 8.1.4, or install the redistributable package (x86 or x64). You can download Sawmill 8.1.4 from http://sawmill.net/download.html .

Sawmill 7 users can upgrade to Sawmill 8 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.

This issue of the Sawmill Newsletter describes how to add a report to your profile with a minute-by-minute detail graph.

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.

Tips & Techniques: Creating a Minutes Report And Graph

A default profile, for any log format with date/time information, includes a Days report, showing a graph of events by day:

The Days Report

Years and Months are also available as separate reports, but a default database stops there--it doesn't allow you to zoom further in the date/time hierarchy to show hours, or minutes, or seconds (although there is an Hour of Day report, based on a separate "hour of day" field, which shows hours of the day). If you want a graph of events minute-by-minute, however, it is possible to add a Minutes reports. This newsletter describes how to create a Minutes report.

Step 1: Increase The Depth Of The Date/Time Hierarchy

Before it can report 1-minute data, Sawmill needs to be configured to collect it. The default behavior is to track date/time field information only three levels deep: year, month, and day. To track minutes, you must increase this "Suppress levels below" database field option to 5, in the Date/time field of Config -> Database Fields:

Database Fields Editor: The Date/Time Field

Save this change. This will require a database rebuild, which we'll do at the end.

Step 2: Create A Minutes Report Field

Next, go to Config -> More Options -> Report Fields, and duplicate the Day report field:

Report Field Editor: Duplicating The Day Field

Now edit the new field, renaming it from "Day copy" to "Minute", and changing the Subitems level to Specific: 5, under the Hierarchical Field Options tab:

Report Field Editor: The Minute Field

This tells Sawmill that any report which uses this Minute field (like the one we'll be creating below) should display level 5 of the date/time hierarchy, i.e., it should display and graph individual minutes.

Save this change.

Step 3: Create A Minutes Report

Now that there is a Minutes report field, it is possible to create a Minutes report. Do this by going to Config -> Reports, duplicating the Days report, and renaming it to Minutes:

Report Editor: Create The Minutes Report

We've renamed the report, but within the report, there is the report element, still called Days, which describes the table and graph in the report. This needs to be changed, to change the element name to Days, and to use the Minutes report field. To do this, click the Days report element in the Minutes report, rename it to Minutes, and change the type to "Minute" (so it is based on the report field just created):

Report Editor: Create The Minutes Report Element

Step 4: Rebuild the Database

Now, rebuild the database, e.g., in Config -> Database Info -> Rebuild Database. This is necessary because the date/time database field has been changed (none of the other changes above require a database rebuild).

Wait until the rebuild completes.

Step 5: View The Minutes Report

Returning to Reports, click the Minutes report:

Reports: Minutes

As expected, the report is similar to Days, but the table and graph show individual minutes.

Professional Services

This newsletter describes the procedure for creating a custom report, specifically a Minutes report. If you need assistance with this or other profile customization, or with any other Sawmill tasks, our Sawmill Experts can help. Contact sales@sawmill.net for more information.

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