User Activity Profile

User Activity Profile

We use IIS logs to create user activity profiles. The IIS logs are text files that contain information about each request and can be viewed directly with a simple text editor or imported into a log analysis program. We recommend using a set of IIS logs covering at least a week s worth of user activity from your Web application to obtain realistic averages. Using more log files creates more reliable usage profiles and weightings. To illustrate the process of creating a user activity profile, we imported a month of IIS log data from a recent performance analysis on a typical e-commerce Web application into a commercial log file analyzer. These IIS log files are comprised of shopper page views related to Homepage, Search, Browse for Product, Add to Basket, and Checkout operations performed on the Web application. The logfile analyzer enabled us to generate Table 2-4. Many commercial log file analyzers that fit all budgets are available. These log analyzers can accurately import, parse, and report on Web application traffic patterns.

Table 2-4. User Activity Profile

User Operation/ Page Name(s)	Number of Page Views	Ratio
Homepage	720,000	40%
default.aspx	720,000	40%
Search	90,000	5%
search.aspx	90,000	5%
Browse	450,000	25%
productfeatures.aspx	216,000	12%
productoverview.aspx	234,000	13%
Add to Basket	360,000	20%
basket.aspx	360,000	20%
Checkout	180,000	10%
checkout.aspx	90,000	5%
checkoutsubmit.aspx	54,000	3%
confirmation.aspx	36,000	2%
Totals	1,800,000	100%

There is a distinction between a hit and a page view. A hit is defined as a request for any individual object or file that is on a Web application, while a page view or request is defined as the request to retrieve an HTML, ASP or ASP.NET page from a Web application and the transmittal of the requested page, which can contain references to many additional page elements. The page is basically what you see after the transfer and can consist of many other files. Page views do not include hits to images, component pages of a frame, or other non-HTML files.

TIP
To simplify constructing your user profile, leave Web application traffic such as image and miscellaneous requests out of the user profile. Also, leave out activity from monitoring tools that ping or access various pages to verify the Web application is functioning properly.