Analog, Tidy make e3000 Web easier

Andreas Schmidt has ported the Analog Web tool to MPE, one of several ports which proves the computer is becoming a real choice for Web services. Analog is the leading choice for tracking the contents of Web server logs, and it would hardly be needed if the 3000 wasn’t racking up Web traffic. Schmidt said he ported the software, one of several Web tools which are absolutely free, because “For MPE/iX such tools may become more important in the future HP e3000 world. It is designed to be fast and to produce attractive statistics.” The engineer who delivered the Ploticus/iX graphics program he wrote about in our September and October issues, Schmidt has a Web page at www.hillschmidt.de/gbr/analog.htm that provides Analog’s e3000-ready code and installation instructions.

We can testify to the tool’s utility. Our Webmaster Chris Bartram has made Analog/iX reports available for our use at the NewsWire's 3000-based site.

The program’s creators have delivered a tool that “allows Webmasters to take an incomprehensible list of traffic data and create intelligent, comprehensible and very useful — from a site marketing and planning point of view — reports that anyone can understand,” according to one online review. “Wading through such a file by hand is pointlessly time-consuming, which is why log file statistics packages exist.”

About one in four Webmasters use Analog, which takes raw log files and creates reports on the number of unique visitors per day, the number of page impressions, which files were downloaded (and how many times), the type of browser and operating system used, CGI command arguments, host names and/or IP addresses, and more. Reports can be tailored to suit the user, and created in HTML, ASCII or machine-readable output.

Schmidt said he has also ported “TIDY, a freeware tool to clean up Web pages for our beloved HP e3000.” The home page of Tidy/iX, the ported version for the HP 3000, is available at www.hillschmidt.de/gbr/tidy.htm