Stats Design

This is a a loosely organized collection of notes and links for the Stats feature design. (Note: this is for the new stats system only - there's an existing legacy system too.)

Bug 124

Stats project team (we're recruiting)

Table definitions

CREATE TABLE statkeylist (
    statkeyid INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, 
    name VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL, 
 
    PRIMARY KEY (statkeyid), 
    UNIQUE KEY (name) 
)
 
CREATE TABLE site_stats ( 
    category_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL, 
    key_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL, 
    insert_time INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL, 
    VALUE INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL, 
 
    -- FIXME: This is good for retrieving data for a single category+key, but 
    -- maybe not as good if we want all keys for the category, with a limit on 
    -- time (ie, last 5 entries, or last 2 weeks). Do we need an extra index? 
    INDEX (category_id, key_id, insert_time) 
)

Storing and retrieving statistics

DW::StatStore

Statistics items

• DW::StatData
• DW::StatData::*

Collecting statistics

This works by massaging, aggregating, and or compiling (as appropriate) data from various places and storing the results using DW::StatStore.

1. etc/stats-collection.conf should contain something like:

## collect and store all stats under the accounts category
## hangs if you don't enclose the asterisk in quotes
# accounts: "*"
## collect and store only these stats under the accounts category
# accounts: [ identity, personal, redirect ]
accounts: "*"
active: "*"
paid: "*"

2. bin/worker/stats-collection is the utility that handles stats collection. Run at least once per 24 hours, either from your crontab or by listing it in etc/workers.conf.

3. (only needed if you chose to use etc/workers.conf): add a line to the "all" section reading:

  stats-collection: 1

(note: this is for development only, as it assumes you only have one server - in production environments, you will usually list it in the section for a specific server)

Displaying statistics

• htdocs/stats/* (public stats)
• htdocs/admin/stats.bml (restricted stats)

(note: as of March 28 there is an uncommitted patch on bug 124 TTizing the stats display to DW::Controller::SiteStats, views/admin/stats.tt, view/site/stats.tt)