WEBVIZ: A Tool for World Wide Web Access Log Analysis

Abstract

Various programs have emerged that provide statistical analysis of World Wide Web (WWW) access logs. These programs typically detail the number of accesses for a file, the number of times a site has visited the database, and some programs even provide temporal analysis of requests. However, these programs are not interactive nor do they provide visualizations of the local database. WebViz was developed with the intention of providing WWW database maintainers and designers with a graphical view of their local database and access patterns. That is, by incorporating the Web-Path paradigm into interactive software, users can see not only the documents (represented visually as nodes) in their database, but also the hyperlinks travelled (represented visually as links) by users requesting documents from the database. WebViz further enables uses to selectively filter the access log (i.e. restrict the graphical view by specifying the desired domain names or DSN numbers, directory names, and start and stop times), control bindings to graph attributes (i.e. node size, border width and color as well as link width and color can be bound to frequency and recency information), play back the events in the access log(i.e. reissue the logged sequence of requests), select a layout of nodes and links that best presents the database's structure, and examine the graph at any instant in time. Clearly, WebViz is a useful WWW database utility given that it can provide the user with graphical information about document accesses and the paths taken by users through the database. Such analyses can facilitate structural and contextual changes resulting in a more efficient use of the document space. This paper details the implementation of WebViz and outlines possible future extensions.