On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
Sure,
Omniture uses what I call a "client side" tracking technique using javascript to dynamically markup an image tag with a query string and fetch that image from Omniture's servers sending data to them via the query string. Google and Yahoo offer similar services with less sophisticated features, but the approach is effectively the same. The data is stored on Omniture's servers and available for reporting in near real time especially when it comes to basic traffic data. It is probably important to note that Omniture and awstats are not mutually exclusive. One is server based and the other runs on the webpage sending data to a hosted platform.
I would have to dig into details to completely expose what our license agreement with Omniture is as is applies to the usage of their software since is a service that we buy from them. Omniture is more akin to Salesforce.com and Google Analytics. To get started with the base functionality of Omniture you drop in some javascript, hopefully in a header or footer, and a few minutes later you can login to your account and start looking at traffic reports. Omniture has many sophisticated features one of which has the interest of Red Hat in response to your comment about Red Hat's needs relating to Fedora. We have the capability with Omniture to do cross-domain path analysis. That is, we can gain much deeper insight into the relationship between the two or more sites from tracking cross site browsing behavior. We can track visitor paths across multiple sites including our international sites. This extends beyond simple entry and exit page analysis. The data is rich and the reporting interface powerful to the extent that it takes some time to explore all the different capabilities should the Fedora community wish to use Omniture for some of its own reporting.
I think this is great, really. I'd love to do it but Omniture has chosen to build their software in a closed source manner so I don't think we can do it. Unless they want to OSS their code, we won't be able to use it.
-Mike