# Administrator Guide

# Overview of Analytics

Analytics allows portal managers and business owners to track and analyze portal usage. Analytics provides the following basic functionality:

- Usage Tracking Metrics: Analytics collects and reports metrics of common portal functions, including community, portlet and document hits.
- Behavior Tracking: Users of Analytics reports can analyze portal metrics to determine usage patterns, such as portal visit duration and usage over time.
- User Profile Correlation: Users of Analytics reports can correlate metric information with user profile information. Usage tracking reports can be viewed and filtered by user profile data such as country, company or title.
- Custom Event Tracking: Portal Administrators and developers can register custom portal and non-portal events that are sent to Analytics using the OpenUsage API. Event data is saved to the Analytics database, which can then be queried for reporting to a portal or non-portal application.

For details on using the OpenUsage API, see the document Using the AquaLogic Interaction Analytics OpenUsage API at http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2006/08/openusage-analytics.html

Note: | You must understand star schema database concepts in order to use Analytics' custom event tracking features.

## Components of Analytics

Analytics is comprised of the following components:

Figure 2-1 Analytics Architecture

The following table describes the components that are delivered with Analytics. For a list of ports used by Analytics, see Installation and Upgrade Guide for BEA AquaLogic Analytics.

Table 2-1 Analytics components
Component | Description
--- | ---
Interaction component | The Interaction component gathers portal usage tracking metrics. It is installed on the same server that hosts the portal. For details on installing the Interaction component, see Installation and Upgrade Guide for BEA AquaLogic Analytics.
OpenUsage API | The OpenUsage API sends the following metrics to the BEA AL Analytics Collector service via the Portal Message Bus (PMB): Portal usage tracking metrics. Custom portal and non-portal events. For details on using the OpenUsage API, see the document Using the AquaLogic Analytics OpenUsage API at http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2006/08/openusage-analytics.html
Analytics services | The following Analytics services are installed on a stand-alone server: BEA AL Analytics Collector service receives data from the Interaction component and gathers data from the portal database through the AquaLogic Interaction Development Kit ("IDK"). The BEA AL Analytics service provides Analytics data to the end user through the Analytics Console or portlets that are created from Analytics portlet templates. For details on installing Analytics services, see Installation and Upgrade Guide for BEA AquaLogic Analytics.
Image Service component (not shown in diagram) | Provides the Image Service with the necessary files to run Analytics. For details on installing the Image Service component, see Installation and Upgrade Guide for BEA AquaLogic Analytics.
Automation Service component (not shown in diagram | Provides the Automation Service with the necessary jobs to synchronize Analytics with the portal. For details on installing the Automation Service component, see Installation and Upgrade Guide for BEA AquaLogic Analytics.
Analytics database | The Analytics database component provides storage for metrics that are gathered from custom portal and non-portal events. For details on configuring the Analytics database, see Installation and Upgrade Guide for BEA AquaLogic Analytics.