The Report Generation Tool
The Administration Tool is simple for anyone familiar with creating user accounts on a network. You need to set a password and let Bazaar Analyzer Pro know where to find the log files. That's as far as it goes.

The Profiler (in the Customize menu) is the tool which lets you configure the type of report you wish to run and specifically how you wish to see your data represented. (Do you care that 1 percent of your traffic is from *.mil Web sites? Or, would you rather have it represented in the "Other" section?) You can configure it from this menu.

If you expect several people to need access to a given report, you may archive it and they may retrieve it at their convenience.

The Report Generation Tool generates reports in HTML, pops another browser and displays the information in Java applets. Each applet may be dynamically rerendered as a pie, bar or line graph, or as a table. The applet dynamically explains information when the mouse is moved over an area for clarification. Here are some of the reports that are generated:

The Options Menu
The Report Scheduler The first utility in the Options menu, the report scheduler lets you specify the type of report to generate, the frequency with which to generate it and the people to e-mail it to, if desired. I thought this feature to be good, but what is really the point of e-mailing an HTML-only non-interactive version of a report to someone when they can view the fully interactive Java-based version? This is a standard feature in most log analysis tools, which is probably why they included it, but this should have been an opportunity to provide better reports than other Web site analysis tools.

The Alert Feature If I'm trying to sell a client my latest product and I direct him to my Web site, how do I know if he ever came to visit? Your average executive normally would have to ask their Webmaster to search the Web server's log or the customer's URL in a generated report. Bazaar Analyzer Pro has an Alert feature which pops up in your window when a particular user visits a page. It can be configured for multiple users or without specifying a user. I thought this feature to be especially nice because it allows people who may not be familiar with Web servers and their tools to use the corporate server as a business tool.

The Minder The Minder monitors a URL at a remote location and e-mails you when something on that page has changed. This feature is far more efficient than an application like FrontPage, which pushes you to check all the links in your Web with a tool. A simple e-mail from Bazaar Analyzer Pro will enable you to maintain all external links on your Web site, as well as monitor certain URLs for product updates (including your competitors).

The Watch window allows for real time monitoring of the number of hits a page is getting. You may change the style of the graph, the page, the scale of the graph or the increments in which the information is generated.

Overall Analysis
What the Bazaar Analyzer Pro does, it does well. It will provide your organization with the data necessary to make informed decision about the organization and nature of your Web site. It also will enable your entire organization to use your Web site as a tool for business. I would say that this is a great example of the type of application which greatly benefits from Java - any user could use all the features of Bazaar Analyzer Pro - whether the user was on a UNIX or Windows machine. If this sort of flexibility is important to your organization, you may want to download the latest copy at http://www.aquas.com.

One caveat: I had numerous problems installing Web Analyzer Pro 1.0. Aquas was very patient with me, offering generous assistance. By the time you read this, Web Analyzer Pro 2.0 should be out. It should contain, among other things, historical tracking of Alerts, the ability to track the path of a user through your Web site and an option to interface your Web server to a pager. Hopefully, in the next release Aquas will have streamlined their installation and configuration process.

Web Analyzer Pro is competitively priced at $699 per license. If you're a Webmaster in an organization for which multiple people in different parts of that organization (or different organizations entirely) need access to information, and need it on demand, I urge you to try Web Analyzer Pro. It's a nice idea, nicely executed and cleverly and purposefully designed. And, it should keep your marketing department happy, which alone may be a good reason to try it.