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 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 per 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'll need Perl, some modules, mysql and, of
course, an INN.
* Perl 5.8.x with standard modules
- Cwd
- File::Basename
- Sys::Syslog
* Perl modules form CPAN
- Cofing::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 per 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 per month are supported; you can use 'groupstats.pl' for
that. See the groupstats.pl man page for more information.
Reporting Bugs
You can report bugs or feature requests to the author by using the
bug tracker at <http://bugs.th-h.de/>.
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.
Author
Thomas Hochstein <thh@inter.net>
<http://th-h.de/>
