Techniques of reducing ram usage

When processing large amounts of log files with lots of clients, there can be large amounts of strain placed on the RAM memory on your computer. There are a number of features in Funnel Web Analyzer which are memory intensive and can be switched off if you do not require certain reports. The most memory intensive features relate to Click Stream reports which display the paths which individual Visitors take through your site. Before you start to do this however, you might want to increase the amount of Virtual memory available for Funnel Web. Instructions on how to do this in Windows are as follows:

The solution to this problem on Windows is probably to increase the memory allocated to the Virtual emory Swap file. You can do this in the following way:

  1. From the Start Menu, select Settings/Contral Panel to launch Control Panel dialog
  2. Select System option from Control Panel
  3. Select the Advanced Tab of the System Properties dialog
  4. Select the Performance Options button
  5. Select the Change button to change the Virtual memory allocation
  6. In the Virtual Memory dialog, increase the Maximum Size of the Paging file size by doubling or tripling.
  7. Select OK to save changes

After performing the steps above, the Virtual Memory available to Funnel Web will be increased to allow for processing of larger log file/s. If you are using Mac OS 9, you can do a Get Info on the Funnel Web binary file and increase the Preferred Size in the Memory settings. Note that you do not need to do this for Mac OSX.

If you find that increasing the Virtual Memory available has not resolved your ram usage issue, then doing the following should reduce the amount of ram usage significantly:

If using Web Settings, in Settings/Statistics/Statistics tab, de-select the following reports so they are not produced:

 

Server Exit Pages
  Exit Pages History
  Mean Path
  Routes to Key Pages
  Routes from Key Pages
Demographic Visitors Click Stream
  Authenticated Users Click Stream
  Session Distribution
Marketing Circulation

 

Another option that adds to the amount of Ram usage is the Retain URL Parameters option in the settings. If you do not need to retain URL paramaters, ensure that this option is de-selected in Settings/Analysis/Dynamic.

Also, if you do need to have records of each individual hit, you may want to ignore items such as .gif and .jpeg images. You can do this by adding an "Exclude File/URL contains .gif" FIlter in Settings/Filters. If you find that a lot of the data in the reports you produce is not used, you may want to consider the above options as they will considerably reduce ram usage. Increasing the Virtual Memory available will also allow much more data to be processed with Funnel Web

Greg Stehle
Funnel Web Analyzer

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