Web based Analytics and Mobile Devices

A couple of weeks ago, while helping one of our clients with setting up the web analytics and clickstream analytics for them, a question came up about Mobile Devices Analytics. There are a lot of challenges in this area - besides being a fact that that is a new area for us, after doing some research we found that mobile browsers do not always accept cookies which makes identification of unique visitors tough - we do have a workaround though by relying on the OS + IP + the browser.

Another big problem is dealing with the changed IP addresses as the mobile users move between the mobile towers. Many vendors typically use a javascript page tagging mechanism to collect the information on the OS, size and resolution of the monitor. And many handsets do not support javascript As a result of this, one can miss out on critical data like conversions and keywords. Another approach is to use Log file analysis. Analog is one of the free programs that is available in case you want to analyze your log files and see the different reports.  But for Mobile Analytics, this solution also falls short. Why?  Because any mobile specific information like the handset capabilities cannot be captured and also because all the people using the same carrier and the phone type cannot be distinguished from one another in this case.

A lot of industry vendors propose these solutions to such problems for mobile analytics:

a) Page tagging: This technique is used by Mobilytics which is a mobile analytics provider and instead of tagging the page with a javascript, they use a snippet of code on the web site for a page tag.  This allows them to capture a rich set of data as well.

b) Packet Sniffing: If you install a mobile analytics server in your environment, a switch can then be used to pass a copy of the incoming packet data to the mobile analytics server and at the same time allowing the same packets to pass to the mobile web server without any delay.   Using this approach, you can get information on the handset resolution, basic web data, handset type, mobile operator and the type of the browser.

Mobile Analytics is a very challenging and a very interesting field and as we do more research on the topic and implement solutions for our clients, we will keep writing up more on it.  Stay tuned.

Windows 7 and Multi-Touch

By now, you must have heard about Microsoft Surface - we had also covered it before in one of our posts. If you haven’t looked at it, here is the link. Some of those multi-touch innovations are making it’s way to the next version of Windows - Windows 7. All things digital had posted an interview of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and it has a video that demonstrates the multi-touch capabilities of Windows 7.  It’s a very interesting demo and a very good chat with Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer.  Interesting times are ahead…

Grid Computing for SQL Server?

There was an interesting post at Information Week. If the information is correct, then post the release of SQL Server 2008, MSFT will be looking at building up an enterprise scale out solution in the next release of SQL Server. Hmmmm…reminds one of RAC (Real Application Clusters) and Grid Computing which Oracle has had since ages Well, that is good news for us, the consumers. You can read more about the difference in the clustering architecture between SQL Server and Oracle over here. This was/is one feature which will really help establish SQL Server as a big player in the enterprise roll outs.

TFS (Team Foundation Server)

TFS is the heart of the Team System and helps to tie together all the resources and the activities that are involved in the application life cycle. If you are new to TFS, here are some good resources to use to get up to speed:

Microsoft Site: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181232.aspx

Guide to Team Build: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2007/08/14/tfs-2008-a-basic-guide-to-team-build-2008.aspx

Community Site: Team System Rocks: http://teamsystemrocks.com/default.aspx

Community Site: TFS Times: http://tfstimes.com/news/

Add-ons for TFS: http://widgets.accentient.com/default.aspx

TFS Power Tools: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/tfs2008/bb980963.aspx

In a very simple 50,000 ft. overview, TFS does all of these:

1. Version Control: Bye-Bye VSS (Visual SourceSafe) - we will blog in the coming days the differences and advantages of TFS over VSS,
2. Automated Builds for applications and databases,
3. Reporting - SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) reports are integrated since the data store is SQL Server 2005 and higher up,
4. Full integration with Visual Studio,
5. Handles bugs, requirements and tasks, and
6. Uses Analysis Services for enhanced reporting.

From an installation perspective, it requires:

1. Windows 2003 - IIS 6.0, .Net Framework 2.0/3.0/3.5, Sharepoint Services (WSS).
2. SQL Server 2005 - Standard/Enterprise Edition: Make sure to install SSRS and SSAS.

In the days to come, we will blog about the different feature sets.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

I don’t know how many of you are aware of this but MSFT has a product called “Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007″ which can be used for managing all real time communications like IM (Instant Messaging), Audio, Video conferencing. In this day and age as people work together outside of the office boundaries and at times even across continents, this might be something that your company or your client might be interested in evaluating for your tele-communications or collaboration needs. You can read up more on this from the MSFT site for UC (Unified Communications):

http://www.microsoft.com/uc/products/ocs2007.mspx

Microsoft’s answer to Amazon’s SimpleDB

This was an interesting post:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1245

Microsoft is following the footsteps of Amazon and is launching SSDS (SQL Server Data Services). It is touted to be highly scalable, on demand data storage and query processing web services. They are looking for testers and getting involved at this stage might be a way for you to get a head start on this new way of implementing solutions for your clients.

You can read up more on Microsoft’s site: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices/default.mspx

iPhone opens up to MS Exchange e-mail

The market for iPhone seems to be opening up for the corporate world also as it seems that iPhone will soon start supporting MS Exchange e-mail in version 2.0 of the product. You can read more in this Infoworld post.

Virtual Labs

MSFT virtual labs is a good way to try out new technology through a guided hands on labs in their virtual online environment. They have virtual labs available for Business Intelligence, SQL Server (including SQL Server 2008), Windows (including the latest 2008 OS),Exchange and many others. This is a very good way to get your hands dirty and gain some knowledge without investing into the software, hardware or training. Check out this link on TechNet for the virtual labs:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb467605.aspx?wt.svl=leftnavvirtuallabs

Also, here is the link for Windows Server 2008 virtual labs:

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/windowsserver2008.aspx?tab=virtuallabs

Voice Over IP

BizTech Magazine featured a very nice article on VoIP in their recent edition. Here is the link to the article:

http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article.asp?item_id=396

Amazon SimpleDB

SimpleDB is Amazon’s latest Web Services offering. As is mentioned by Amazon on their site:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=342335011

“This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud”

This is yet another step towards parallel distributed data management for large data stores.  This web-service is based on the YOYODA model - You Own Your Own Data - Always. It will take some time to become familiar with the new terminology and the similarities as well as the differences between what SimpleDB offers versus what conventional RDBMS offer.  In the days to come, we will write more on this.