Features at a glance

The Urchin Appliance offers a lot of features which extend and complement Urchin from Google in many ways and which deliver reliable results also because of the underlying server hardware.

Feature	Running Urchin on own server	Urchin Appliance
Obtaining hardware	Customer has to evaluate which hardware they have from the Supported Platforms list and purchase	Works on powerful hardware evaluated and verified on the basis of our years of experience
Operating system	The selection of the operating system normally is done according to the company policy, which might lead to incompatibilities	The operating system for the Urchin Appliance was selected, taking into account a high compatibility with Urchin
Installation	The cost of installation of the operating system and Urchin, as well as possible additional software, is the responsibility of the customer	Operating system, Urchin and all necessary extensions are already installed on the Urchin Appliance on delivery
Management and administration of the operating system	The customer has full control over the operating system	The customer has a limited control over the operating system, which allows the stability and functionality of the Urchin Appliance to be guaranteed
Security of the operating system	The customer must spend time on securing the operating system and at the same time insure that the functionality of Urchin is not impaired	The operating system is already secured with the Urchin Appliance
Security of the operating system (updates)	The customer must independently verify the compatibility of operating system updates	The Urchin Appliance installs updates exclusively from webalytics’ own repository, which contains only tested operating system updates
Transfer of log files	For automated transfer, Urchin by default can only make use of the protocols FTP, HTTP, HTTPS and UNC	The Urchin Appliance allows the automatic transfer by using the protocols FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, UNC (CIFS), SFTP and SCP
Repeated transfer of log files	In Urchin, the repeated transfer of interrupted file transfers will result in the risk of multiple file transfers, causing unnecessary traffic	When a repeated file transfer occurs, the Urchin Appliance determines which of the files in the remote directory have already been transferred and so, transfers only the missing log files
Time of transfer	The transfer of log files in Urchin will only start when the processing of the profile has started	The transfer of log files can take place independently of profile processing. For example, the log sources which are arranged for one profile can be retrieved at the time when they were made available for transfer. The start of the profile processing is then established at a point in time shortly after transfer.
Anonymizing IP addresses in the log files	Anonymization of IP addresses inside the log files must be carried out manually by the customer; Urchin only offers the possibility of anonymizing IP addresses while processing profiles only by means of applying a filter	The log file retrieval contained in the Urchin Appliance offers the possibility to anonymize IP addresses in the log during the files transfer, so that only the anonymous data is provided
Handling of log files	Uncompressed log files which reside in remote destinations will be stored uncompressed by Urchin on the local hard drive	The log file retrieval contained in the Urchin Appliance ensures that any transmitted log file is automatically compressed when stored
Chronological limitation of log file transmission	Urchin offers no possibility of using a defined log source from and after a specified date or for a specified time period	The log file retrieval contained in the Urchin Appliance makes it possible to establish a beginning and ending date for the use of a log source
Avoiding redundant transfer of files	Urchin offers no possibility of preventing redundant transfers of files, so that, for example deleted log files will be transferred repeatedly	The integrated log function ensures that files which have once been transferred will not be retrieved again, even if they were deleted from the local hard drive
Copying profiles	In Urchin, if a profile is copied dependent data is not copied along with it	The Appliance Management Tool copies a profile with all associated and dependent data
Copying dependent entries	Copying of log sources, filters, users, groups and CPC sources is not possible	The Appliance Management Tool provides the ability to copy any entry
Backup	The design of a suitable backup strategy resides with the responsibility of the server administrator	Integrated backup function which stores the directories of data, programs and log files on a daily basis locally or remotely in a compressed file
Sending report automatically by e-mail	Urchin, by design, does not have the ability to send reports	In the Urchin Appliance, the Urchin Report Tool is integrated by default and provides automated sending of reports by e-mail
Tracking outbound links and cross domain campaigns	The ability to track external links, mailto links, downloads as well as cross domain campaigns is not integrated with Urchin	The Urchin Appliance comes along with the script trackEDM which makes it possible to track external links, mailto links, downloads as well as cross domain campaigns
Display detailed data	Urchin’s configuration interface only displays a limited set of information in a browser window	The Appliance Management Tool shows many important information at once and also allows editing those
System surveillance	Urchin offers no tools to monitor the functionality of the system – the administrator probably needs to go back to third party products	Along with various utility statistics which are integrated into the Appliance Management Tool, the administrator of Urchin Appliance can also be notified by e-mail in the event of disruptions or an unusual system status and thereby act promptly or on a preventive basis
Checking regular expressions (RegEx)	In order to be able to check the accuracy of a regular expression’s syntax, third party software products are required, as well as constantly copying and inserting the RegEx	With the RegEx Tester, integrated into the Appliance Management Tool, regular expressions can be created and checked for their syntactical accuracy