Request for your suggestions : Annotator to process IIS w3c-log-formats

[Balkrishnan <ba...@gmail.com>]

Hi Marshall,

I have successfully created an annotator and used it to get some analytics from
the web-server logs. Then again, can I request you to have a quick look at the
problem-description and the solution-used (as given below) ? 

I would like to know if I am making use of the Annotator properly. [The goal is
to generate user-behaviour patterns using UIMA]
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Problem Statement:

To generate the User-Behaviour patterns [like, the paths used by an user] from
the web-server logs. (say, IIS-W3C-log-format) 

[Here the IPAddress is assumed as the user]
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My solution to the problem description mentioned above involves the following
steps[1 - 7]:

Step 1 The latest stable version of the UIMA Java framework is down-loaded from
the Apache web-site using the Subclipse. The UIMA is set-up on the Eclipse IDE
for development and it is built using the Maven.

Step 2 An Annotator is developed that consumes the web-server's log-file.
Currently our annotator supports the IIS W3C-format for the web-server logs.
===> [Here I have used an Annotator very similar to the Room-Number Annotator]

Step 3 A PEAR package is created for the annotator.

Step 4 This PEAR package is fed as an input to the Simple-Server(a UIMA REST
Service). The output of this service is an XML
file that contains the data needed for our analysis.

Step 5 An XML-DOM Parser parses the above XML output and store the output in a
MySQL database.

Step 6 The annotator and the parser will be provided as a JAR file for the
end-user to be run using a scheduled-job, so that the
processing of the web-server logs is automated.

Step 7 The Resin web-server is used to run the JSP-based application to display
the reports based on the analytics.

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Doubts:

If this is an acceptable way of using the Annotator, does it mean that in this
specific scenario even a Shell-Script would do an equally good job ?


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Can you please suggest any modifications that I can do to make my solution
unique to UIMA ?


Thankyou so much for your time.

Kind Regards,
Balkrishnan.V