DSpace Statistics

DSpace 1.6 and newer versions uses the Apache SOLR application underlying the statistics. SOLR enables performant searching and adding to vast amounts of (usage) data.
Unlike previous versions, enabling statistics in DSpace does not require additional installation or customization. All the necessary software is included.

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What is exactly being logged ?

Each time a page or file gets requested, this request is being logged. The logging happens at the server side, and doesn't require a javascript like Google Analytics does, to provide usage data.

Definition of which fields are to be stored happens in the file dspace/solr/statistics/conf/schema.xml.
The fields, stored in a usage event by default are:

Code Block

<field name="type" type="integer" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
<field name="id" type="integer" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
<field name="ip" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" />
<field name="time" type="date" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
<field name="epersonid" type="integer" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" />
<field name="continent" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="country" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="countryCode" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="city" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="longitude" type="float" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="latitude" type="float" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="owningComm" type="integer" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="true"/>
<field name="owningColl" type="integer" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="true"/>
<field name="owningItem" type="integer" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false" multiValued="true"/>
<field name="dns" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="userAgent" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>
<field name="isBot" type="boolean" indexed="true" stored="true" required="false"/>

The combination of type and id determine which resource (either community, collection, item page or file download) has been requested.

Web user interface for DSpace statistics

In the XMLUI, statistics can be accessed from the lower end of the navigation menu. In the JSPUI, a view statistics button appears on the bottom of pages for which statistics are available.

If you are not seeing these links or buttons, it's likely that they are only enabled for administrators in your installation. Change the configuration parameter "statistics.item.authorization.admin" to false in order to make statistics visible for all repository visitors.

Home page

Starting from the repository homepage, the statistics page displays the top 10 most popular items of the entire repository.

Community home page

The following statistics are available for the community home pages:

Total visits of the current community home page
Visits of the community home page over a timespan of the last 7 months
Top 10 country from where the visits originate
Top 10 cities from where the visits originate

Collection home page

The following statistics are available for the collection home pages:

Total visits of the current collection home page
Visits of the collection home over a timespan of the last 7 months
Top 10 country from where the visits originate
Top 10 cities from where the visits originate

Item home page

The following statistics are available for the item home pages:

Total visits of the item
Total visits for the bitstreams attached to the item
Visits of the item over a timespan of the last 7 months
Top 10 country views from where the visits originate
Top 10 cities from where the visits originate

Usage Event Logging and Usage Statistics Gathering

The DSpace Statistics Implementation is a Client/Server architecture based on Solr for collecting usage events in the JSPUI and XMLUI user interface applications of DSpace. Solr runs as a separate webapplication and an instance of Apache Http Client is utilized to allow parallel requests to log statistics events into this Solr instance.

Configuration settings for Statistics

In the dspace.cfg file review the following fields to make sure they are uncommented:

Property:

solr.log.server

Example Value:

solr.log.server = http://127.0.0.1/solr/statistics

Informational Note:

Is used by the SolrLogger Client class to connect to the Solr server over http and perform updates and queries. In most cases, this can (and should) be set to localhost (or 127.0.0.1).

To determine the correct path, you can use a tool like wget to see where Solr is responding on your server. For example, you'd want to send a query to Solr like the following:

Code Block
wget http://127.0.0.1/solr/statistics/select?q=:

Assuming you get an HTTP 200 OK response, then you should set solr.log.server to the '/statistics' URL of 'http://127.0.0.1/solr/statistics' (essentially removing the "/select?q=:" query off the end of the responding URL.)

Property:

solr.spiderips.urls

Example Value:

solr.spiderips.urls =

Code Block

http://iplists.com/google.txt, \
http://iplists.com/inktomi.txt, \
http://iplists.com/lycos.txt, \
http://iplists.com/infoseek.txt, \
http://iplists.com/altavista.txt, \
http://iplists.com/excite.txt, \
http://iplists.com/misc.txt, \
http://iplists.com/non_engines.txt

Informational Note:

List of URLs to download spiders files into [dspace]/config/spiders. These files contain lists of known spider IPs and are utilized by the SolrLogger to flag usage events with an "isBot" field, or ignore them entirely.

The "stats-util" command can be used to force an update of spider files, regenerate "isBot" fields on indexed events, and delete spiders from the index. For usage, run:

Code Block
dspace stats-util -h

from your [dspace]/bin directory

Property:

solr.dbfile

Example Value:

solr.dbfile = ${dspace.dir}/config/GeoLiteCity.dat

Informational Note:

The following referes to the GeoLiteCity database file utilized by the LocationUtils to calculate the location of client requests based on IP address. During the Ant build process (both fresh_install and update) this file will be downloaded from http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity if a new version has been published or it is absent from your [dspace]/config directory.

Property:

solr.resolver.timeout

Example Value:

solr.resolver.timeout = 200

Informational Note:

Timeout in milliseconds for DNS resolution of origin hosts/IPs. Setting this value too high may result in solr exhausting your connection pool.

Property:

useProxies

Example Value:

useProxies = true

Informational Note:

Will cause Statistics logging to look for X-Forward URI to detect clients IP that have accessed it through a Proxy service (e.g. the Apache mod_proxy). Allows detection of client IP when accessing DSpace. [Note: This setting is found in the DSpace Logging section of dspace.cfg]

Property:

statistics.item.authorization.admin

Example Value:

statistics.item.authorization.admin = true

Informational Note:

When set to true, only general administrators, collection and community administrators are able to access the statistics from the web user interface. As a result, the links to access statistics are hidden for non logged-in admin users. Setting this property to "false" will display the links to access statistics to anyone, making them publicly available.

Property:

solr.statistics.logBots

Example Value:

solr.statistics.logBots = true

Informational Note:

When this property is set to false, and IP is detected as a spider, the event is not logged.
When this property is set to true, the event will be logged with the "isBot" field set to true.
(see solr.statistics.query.filter.* for query filter options)

Property:

solr.statistics.query.filter.spiderIp

Example Value:

solr.statistics.query.filter.spiderIp = false

Informational Note:

If true, statistics queries will filter out spider IPs -- use with caution, as this often results in extremely long query strings.

Property:

solr.statistics.query.filter.isBot

Example Value:

solr.statistics.query.filter.isBot = true

Informational Note:

If true, statistics queries will filter out events flagged with the "isBot" field. This is the recommended method of filtering spiders from statistics.

Upgrade Process for Statistics.

Example of rebuild and redeploy DSpace (only if you have configured your distribution in this manner)

First approach the traditional DSpace build process for updating

Code Block
cd [dspace-source]/dspace mvn package cd [dspace-source]/dspace/target/dspace-<version>-build.dir ant -Dconfig=[dspace]/config/dspace.cfg update cp -R [dspace]/webapps/* [TOMCAT]/webapps

The last step is only used if you are not mounting [dspace]/webapps directly into your Tomcat, Resin or Jetty host (the recommended practice)If you only need to build the statistics, and don't make any changes to other web applications, you can replace the copy step above with:

Code Block
cp -R dspace/webapps/solr TOMCAT/webapps

Again, only if you are not mounting [dspace]/webapps directly into your Tomcat, Resin or Jetty host (the recommended practice)

Restart your webapps (Tomcat/Jetty/Resin)

Older setting that are not related to the new 1.6 Statistics

The following Dspace.cfg fields are only applicable to the older statistics solution.

Code Block

 ###### Statistical Report Configuration Settings ######

 # should the stats be publicly available?  should be set to false if you only
 # want administrators to access the stats, or you do not intend to generate
 # any
 report.public = false

 # directory where live reports are stored
 report.dir = ${dspace.dir}/reports/

These fields are not used by the new 1.6 Statistics, but are only related to the Statistics from previous DSpace releases

Statistics Administration

Converting older DSpace logs into SOLR usage data

If you have upgraded from a previous version of DSpace, converting older log files ensures that you carry over older usage stats from before the upgrade.

Statistics Client Utility

The command line interface (CLI) scripts can be used to clean the usage database from additional spider traffic and other maintenance tasks.

Statistics differences between DSpace 1.6.x and 1.7.0

SOLR optimization added

If required, the solr server can be optimized by running

Code Block
{dspace.dir}/bin/stats-util -o

. More information on how these solr server optimizations work can be found here: http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrPerformanceFactors#Optimization_Considerations.

SOLR Autocommit

In DSpace 1.6.x, each solr event was committed to the solr server individually. For high load DSpace installations, this would result in a huge load of small solr commits resulting in a very high load on the solr server.
This has been resolved in dspace 1.7 by only committing usage events to the solr server every 15 minutes. This will result in a delay of the storage of a usage event of maximum 15 minutes. If required, this value can be altered by changing the maxTime property in the

Code Block
{dspace.dir}/solr/statistics/conf/solrconfig.xml.

Custom Reporting

When the web user interface does not offer you the statistics you need, you can greatly expand the reports by querying the SOLR index directly.

Resources

Examples

Top downloaded items by a specific user

Query:

Code Block
http://localhost:8080/solr/statistics/select?indent=on&version=2.2&start=0&rows=10&fl=*%2Cscore&qt=standard&wt=standard&explainOther=&hl.fl=&facet=true&facet.field=epersonid&q=type:0

Explained:

facet.field=epersonid — You want to group by epersonid, which is the user id.
type:0 — Interested in bitstreams only

Code Block

<lst name="facet_counts">
    <lst name="facet_fields">
        <lst name="epersonid">
            <int name="66">1167</int>

<int name="117">251</int>

<int name="52">42</int>

<int name="19">36</int>

<int name="88">20</int>

<int name="112">18</int>

<int name="110">9</int>

<int name="96">0</int>

</lst>
    </lst>
</lst>

All Versions

DSpace Documentation

Page tree

Versions Compared

Old Version 44

New Version Current

Key

DSpace Statistics

What is exactly being logged ?

Web user interface for DSpace statistics

Home page

Community home page

Collection home page

Item home page

Usage Event Logging and Usage Statistics Gathering

Configuration settings for Statistics

Upgrade Process for Statistics.

Older setting that are not related to the new 1.6 Statistics

Statistics Administration

Converting older DSpace logs into SOLR usage data

Statistics Client Utility

Statistics differences between DSpace 1.6.x and 1.7.0

SOLR optimization added

SOLR Autocommit

Custom Reporting

Resources

Examples

Top downloaded items by a specific user

All Versions

DSpace Documentation

Page tree

Page History

Versions Compared

Old Version 44

New Version Current

Key

DSpace Statistics

What is exactly being logged ?

Web user interface for DSpace statistics

Home page

Community home page

Collection home page

Item home page

Usage Event Logging and Usage Statistics Gathering

Configuration settings for Statistics

Upgrade Process for Statistics.

Older setting that are not related to the new 1.6 Statistics

Statistics Administration

Converting older DSpace logs into SOLR usage data

Statistics Client Utility

Statistics differences between DSpace 1.6.x and 1.7.0

SOLR optimization added

SOLR Autocommit

Custom Reporting

Resources

Examples

Top downloaded items by a specific user