[Dspace-general] statistics in 1.6?

[Stuart Lewis]

Hi Alice,

> During the DuraSpace webinar on September 30, it was mentioned that  
> the statistics for DSpace would be enhanced in 1.6, but the speaker  
> was unable to elaborate in what ways. He said the specific features  
> would probably be hammered out at the User Group meeting in October.
>
> So I’m wondering… do we know? Thanks!

As the release co-ordinator for 1.6, I'll explain what is coming with  
the new stats, and give a brief update about the general progress of  
1.6.

As you know, better statistics was the the number one feature in the  
community survey of the most wanted new features for 1.6. Mark Diggory  
and other staff members from @mire (atmire.com) have written a new  
statistics collection and query service based on solr (http://lucene.apache.org/solr/ 
). This allows real-time collection of events (item views, file  
downloads, searches) to be stored, indexed, and then quickly searched.  
In addition it has the ability to record extra information such as the  
geographic location of the user based on their IP address.

At present the statistics collection works well, and the user  
interfaces are being developed. @mire are contributing the XMLUI  
interface, while Kim Shepherd from the Library Consortium of New  
Zealand (http://www.lconz.ac.nz/) has begun work on a JSPUI interface.  
An example of an early test of the XMLUI interface can be seen at http://testathon.net/xmlui/handle/123456789/31 
  You'll notice that as you refresh the page, the statistics update.

It is likely that 1.6 will only contain basic reporting functions, but  
with the inclusion of solr and the event collection framework, we can  
build new and better reports in subsequent versions. Feedback on the  
initial release will be important for the community to decide what  
reports need to be created for future versions. It will also be  
possible to write custom local reports by querying the solr indexes  
directly.

We also hope to release a tool to transfer legacy dspace.log file  
statistics into solr so that you do not lose any of your current  
statistics. The current statistics system will remain - its future has  
yet to be decided.

Once the statistics system has been finished to an acceptable  
standard, we'll move to a testing phase and run a testathon / bug  
hunt. The whole community will be invited and encouraged to make use  
of some test servers that will be setup, or to test on local copies.  
We'll also be looking for volunteers to perform test upgrades of  
earlier versions to ensure the upgrade documentation is good. Once  
that is finished, we'll fix any bugs, perform some further testing,  
then release 1.6.

Some of the other features to make it into 1.6 include:
  - An embargo framework
  - A batch metadata editing system
  - Authority control lists and AJAX lookups
  - Delegated administrator roles
  - OAI-PMH harvesting support (to harvest other repositories into  
your DSpace repository)
  - A new 'services' infrastructure
  - OpenSearch support
  - New DSpace command launcher (full support for Unix and Windows  
systems)
  - A new zip option for the importer and exporter
  - Dozens of bug fixes and small improvements

Thanks,


Stuart Lewis
IT Innovations Analyst and Developer
Te Tumu Herenga The University of Auckland Library
Auckland Mail Centre, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Ph: 64 9 373-7599 x81928
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/