Log Parser Lizard 1.1

Log Parser Lizard 1.1 offers users a professional, functional and versatile tool that provides universal query access to text based data, such as log files, XML files, and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Microsoft Windows operating system, such as the event log, IIS log, the registry, the file system, and the Active Directory directory service. Becouse the command line interface is not very intuitive, Log Parser Lizard is created, a GUI tool for managing queries, exporting results to Excel, charts, etc... In addition it provides input filters for log4net file format (with support for regular expressions) and SQL server T SQL queries.

Log Parser is made up of three components:

• Input Formats are generic record provider (records are equivalent to rows in a SQL table. Log Parser's built-in Input Formats can retrieve data from the following sources:
  • IIS log files (W3C, IIS, NCSA, Centralized Binary Logs, HTTP Error logs, URLScan logs, ODBC logs)
  • Windows Event Log
  • Generic XML, CSV, TSV and W3C - formatted text files (e.g. Exchange Tracking log files, Personal Firewall logfiles, Windows Media Services logfiles, FTP log files, SMTP log files, apache log files etc.)
  • Windows Registry
  • Active Directory Objects
  • File and Directory information
  • NetMon .cap capture files
  • Extended/Combined NCSA log files
  • ETW traces
  • Custom plugins (through a public COM interface)
  • In addition to these input formats Log Parser Lizard GUI have added input filters for:
    • Parsing text based log files line-by-line with Regular Expressions (RegEx Input Format)
    • Log4net and log4j file format (also with support for regular expressions). This input format is also used for parsing multiline text log files (one record is spread through one or more text lines) from various sources
    • SQL server T-SQL queries, retrieves data from SQL server tables and views. For a quick way to export some data from SQL Server to Excel file or to a chart image.
• A SQL-Like Engine Core processes the records generated by an Input Format, using a dialect of the SQL language that includes common SQL clauses (SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY), aggregate functions (SUM, COUNT, AVG, MAX, MIN), and a rich set of functions (e.g. SUBSTR, CASE, COALESCE, REVERSEDNS, etc.); the resulting records are then sent to an Output Format.
• Output Formats are generic consumers of records; they can be thought of as SQL tables that receive the results of the data processing.
  Log Parser's built-in Output Formats can:
  • Write data to text files in different formats (CSV, TSV, XML, W3C, user-defined, etc.)
  • Send data to a SQL database
  • Send data to a SYSLOG server
  • Create charts and save them in either GIF or JPG image files
  • Display data to the console or to the screen

Major Features:

1. Run Log Parser Lizard
2. Create a new query (click on “New query” button on the toolbar)
3. From the drop down list in the toolbar select your file format (for instance 'W3C IIS file format')
4. Check properties (the button next to the drop down list) – these are equivalent to MS LogParser command line switches.
5. Enter simple query (as you would in MS LogParser command line) in a query text box in the bottom of the window (ex. select * from <1>) to see if it works.
6. Click Generate
7. See results :)
8. In the “Queries” dialog box you can organize your queries in separate groups (the groups are on the left of the main window in the so-called-outlook-bar)
9. In the “Options” dialog box you can set options/macros that would be replaced in every query. For instance, I put here some date-time ranges (for monthly log reports and log statistics) and some paths, server names, so I can use the same queries on a different domains.
10. In the Export dialog box, you can configure options for exporting data with queries.
11. You can always save results in Excel file for future analysis.
12. From the Chart drop down menu, you can select type of chart (column, pie, 2D, 3D…) and/or save it to graphic file (jpg, gif).

 Requirements:

1. MS Log Parser 2.2,
2. .Net Framework 2.0

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