[analog-help] Dates Out Of Range In Request Report Generated FromCache File

[Aengus]

On Monday, September 03, 2007 10:43 AM [EDT],
tobias.schaefer at orf.at <tobias.schaefer at orf.at> wrote:

> However, after a month I spotted the following (mis)behaviour:
>
> Dates out of the specified range (defined by FROM and TO) appeared in
> the requests of the monthly HTML output, e.g. an entry for Aug-27 in
> the "2007-
> 09.html" file.
>
> The header of the file, however, shows the correct date range, e.g.
> "Analysed requests from Sat-01-Sep-2007 00:00 to Mon-03-Sep-2007
> 04:02 (2.17 days)".
>
> Did I miss anything to make the request report respect the given date
> range or is this result intentional?
>
> I would be very happy to receive some help in this issue since I
> really don't have any clue how to proceed.

You can't apply a FROM/TO filter to a cache file after you create it - the 
whole point of a cache file is that you've discarded a bunch of infomation, 
such as the time that each individual request was made, so the information 
that you need to filter out requests that occur between the FROM and TO 
times isn't in the cache file.

The documentation for cache files mentions this at both the start and the 
end of the page:

"If you are going to use the cache file feature, it is also very important 
that you understand what is and what is not recorded. The summary is that 
all INCLUDE and EXCLUDE commands, including FROM and TO, and any ALIASes and 
LOGTIMEOFFSETs, must be applied when you create the cache file, not when you 
read it later."

"As explained above, all INCLUDE and EXCLUDE commands, including FROM and 
TO, and any ALIASes and LOGTIMEOFFSETs, must be applied when you create the 
cache file, not when you read it later."

http://analog.cx/docs/cache.html

Personally, my recommendation is that if your report layout and design 
hasn't been 100% static for at least 6 months, stay away from cache files. 
And even if your layout has been static for that long, unless you're dealing 
with gigabytes per day of log files, cache files are more trouble than 
they're worth.