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Sawmill Newsletter

  March 15, 2009



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 .


News

Sawmill 8.0.5 shipped on February 26, 2009. This is a minor "bug fix" release, and it is free to existing Sawmill 8 users.  It is recommended for anyone who is experiencing problems with Sawmill 8.0.4 or earlier. You can download it 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 the new date range filtering options in Sawmill 8, including relative date ranges.


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: Date Range Filtering

When viewing or generating reports, it is often useful to see reports for a particular day, month, or year; or a particular range of days. This can be done with the Date Picker, the Report Date option of the Scheduler, or Date Filter Expressions.


The Date Picker

Sawmill has a dedicated window in the Reports section of the web interface, just for date filtering:

DatePicker

The Date Picker

In addition to filtering on a particular day, week, month, quarter, or year (using the "Date or Start Date" tab), or on a specific range of days (using the "Date or Start Date" and "End Date" tabs together to select the starting and ending day of the range), it is also possible to filter on a relative range of days. For instance, you can filter on the "recent 5 days" to select the most recent 5 days relative to the date the report is generated, including the current day; or you can filter on the "last 2 weeks" to select the most recent 5 days relative to the date the report is generated, excluding the current day.

When a date or range is selected in the Date Picker, the generated report will be created from only those events which occurred during a specified period.


Date Filtering In The Scheduler: The Report Date Option

The Date Picker is available only for ad hoc web-based reporting, but when sending reports from the Scheduler, you can use the Report Date option to some types of common date filters:
SchedulerDateRange

The Report Date Option (Scheduler)

The default includes the entire range of dates. The second and third options specify a specific number of units (e.g., 5 days, or 2 weeks), counting backward from the date of the report, or from the end of the log data. The last option lets you enter a date filter expression, described below.

When a Report Date option is specified, the generated report will be created from only those event which occurred during the specified period.


Advanced Topic: Date Filter Expressions

The Date Picker is available when using the Reports section of the profile to generate ad hoc reports through the web interface, and the Report Date option is available when generating reports from the Scheduler. In other situations, date filtering is done by typing a date filter expression. These include:
Date Filter Expressions are strings of characters. The simplest options select single date units, e.g.:

01/Jan/2008
 All data from January 1, 2008
Jan/2008 All data from January, 2008
Q2/2008
 All data from the second quarter of 2008 (April 1, 2008 through June 30, 2008)
2008
 All data from 2008

Any two simple date expressions can be combined with a hypen to form a range, which selects data from the beginning of the first expression, to the end of the second expression:

01/Jan/2008-15/Jan/2008
 		All data from January 1, 2008 through January 15, 2008
Jan/2008-May/2008 All data from January, 2008 through May, 2008
Q2/2008-Q3/2008
 		All data from the second quarter of 2008, through the third quarter of 2008 (April 1, 2008 through September 30, 2008)
2008-2009
 		All data from 2008 through 2009 (two full years of data)

Date range expressions can also be relative to the time of report generation:

last 30 days
 		All log data from the last 30 days. Last excludes the current calendar day.
recent 30 days
 		All log data from the most recent 30 days of the log data, relative to the moment of report generation. Recent includes the current calendar day.
recent 2 quarters
 All log data from the most recent 2 full quarters, including the quarter when the report is generated (the current quarter).
yesterday
 All log data from yesterday
today
 All log data from today
2 weeks ago
 All log data from the week two weeks before report generation

Other options (useful only in ranges), include:

end
 		The last second of log data
start
 		The first second of log data
start of X
 The first second of the range X, which can be any non-range date expression (e.g., "start of yesterday")
end of X
 The last second of the range X, which can be any non-range date expression (e.g., "end of Q2/2008")
unit N units before X
 The time unit (e.g., month) N units before the range X (e.g., "month 4 months before 2008")

Advanced results can be achieved by combining the items above into ranges, keeping in mind that a range goes from the first second of the first item, until the last second of the last item, e.g.:

2 weeks ago-yesterday The last two weeks, except today
start of 2008-1 week ago January 1, 2008 through the day one week ago
4 weeks ago-3 weeks ago All data collected between 3 and 4 weeks ago
Q1/2006-end of 2008 January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2008
week 2 weeks before end-week 0 weeks before end
 The last two weeks of data in the database (relative to the end of the data in the database).


Advanced Topic: Date Filter Expressions Plug-ins

The date filter syntax is quite flexible, but if you need a date filter which is not supported, it is possible to add support for it by writing a date filter expression plug-in. The details of date filter expression plug-in authoring are beyond the scope of this document, but in brief, it is a CFG file in the date_filters folder of LogAnalysisInfo, which describes (1) what the expression looks like, (2) what parameters it has, and (3) how to compute the beginning and end of the range it represents. All expressions above are implemented in this way, so the examples in that folder can serve as a good starting point for writing your own. This could be used, for instance, to implement date filters based on fiscal quarters ("FQ1/2008-FQ2/2008"), holidays ("Labor Day, 2009"), or anything else ("third tuesday of Jan, 2009-end of 2009"; "start of 2008-my birthday, 2008").


Professional Services

This newsletter describes date range filters. The most common uses are straightforward, but if you need to do something more advanced, like creating a complex date filter expression, or even a date filter expression plug-in, our Sawmill Experts can help. Contact sales@sawmill.net for more information.



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