newsstats/doc/README

NewsStats 0.1  (c) 2010 Thomas Hochstein <thh@inter.net>

NewsStats is a software package for gathering statistical data live
from a Usenet feed and subsequent examination.

This script package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation.

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What's that?

    There's a multitude of tools for the statistical examination of
    newsgroups: number of postings per month or per person, longest
    threads, and so on (see <http://th-h.de/infos/usenet/stats.php>
    [German language] for an incomplete list). Most of them use a per-
    newsgroup approach while NewsStats is hierarchy oriented.

    NewsStats will accumulate data from a live INN feed, allowing you
    to process the saved information later on.

Workflow

    NewsStats saves overview data and complete headers of (all)
    incoming postings to a (MySQL) database in real time.

    That raw data will be regularly - e.g. monthly - processed to a
    second set of database tables each dedicated to a certain
    statistical aspect, e.g. number of postings per group and month.

    Several kinds of reports can then be generated from those result
    tables.

Prerequisites

    NewsStats is written in Perl (5.8.x and above) and makes use of a
    MySQL database, so you will need Perl, some modules, mysql and, of
    course, INN.

    * Perl 5.8.x with standard modules
      - Cwd
      - File::Basename
      - Sys::Syslog

    * Perl modules form CPAN
      - Config::Auto
      - Date::Format
      - DBI

    * mysql 5.0.x

    * working installation of INN

Installation instructions

    See INSTALL.   

Getting Started

    'feedlog.pl' will continuously feed raw data to your raw data
    table. See the feedlog.pl man page for more information.

    You can process that data via 'gatherstats.pl'; currently only the
    tabulation of postings per group and month is supported. More to
    come. See the gatherstats.pl man page for more information.

    Report generation is handled by specialised scripts for each
    report type. Currently only reports on the number of postings per
    group and month are supported; you can use 'groupstats.pl' for
    this. See the groupstats.pl man page for more information.

Reporting Bugs

    You can report bugs or feature requests to the author using the
    bug tracker at <http://bugs.th-h.de/>.

    Please have a look at the TODO list before suggesting
    improvements.

More Information

    This program is maintained using the Git version control system.
    You may clone <git://code.th-h.de/usenet/newsstats.git> to check
    out the current development tree or browse it on the web via
    <http://code.th-h.de/?p=usenet/newsstats.git>.

Related projects

    <http://usenet.dex.de/> is a site were data gathered via NewsStats
    is used for a graphical presentation of activity in the de.*
    Usenet hierarchy over the years (since 1992).

Author

    Thomas Hochstein <thh@inter.net>
    <http://th-h.de/>