Method and system for parsing navigation information

• US 20030144988A1
• Filed: 12/16/2002
• Published: 07/31/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 07/11/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Revenue Science
• Original Assignee: Revenue Science
• Inventors: Uppala, Radha Krishna, Nareddy, Krishnamohan
• Granted Patent: US 6,873,981 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99937 Sorting
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99954 Version management

Abstract

A method and system for providing customers with access to and analysis of the navigation data collected at customer web sites is provided. In one embodiment, a data warehouse system collects customer data from the customer web sites and stores the data at a data warehouse server. The customer data may include navigation data (e.g., click stream log files), user attribute data of users of the customer web site (e.g., name, age, and gender), product data (e.g., catalog of products offered for sale by the customer), shopping cart data (i.e., identification of the products currently in a user'"'"'s shopping call), and so on. When the data warehouse server receives customer data, it converts the customer data into a format that is more conducive to processing by decision support system applications by which customers can analyze their data. For example, the data warehouse server may analyze low-level navigation events (e.g., each HTTP request that is received by the customer web site) to identify high-level events (e.g., a user session). The data warehouse server then stores the converted data into a data warehouse.

Claims

1. A method of processing data before updating a database based on the processed data, the database having a main table with a main identifier for each entry in the main table, the method comprising:

identifying an entry that should be in the main table;

generating a local identifier for the entry;

adding the entry with the local identifier to a local table;

generating information to be stored in the database that references the entry in the local table using the local identifier; and

after generating the information,

generating a main identifier for the entry;

adding an entry with the main identifier to the main table; and

storing the generated information in the database with the local identifier replaced with the main identifier;

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the local table is stored in main memory.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the table is a dimension table of the database.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the generated information is stored in a fact table of the database.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the local identifier is generated based on key information.

6. The method of claim 5 including generating a hash value based on the key information and storing the hash value in the entry of the local table.

7. The method of claim 6 including using the stored hash value to locate entries in the main table.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the processed data relates to navigation information of a web site.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the processed data is click stream data.

20. The method of claim 19 wherein a session is delimited by time between access of web pages by the user.

10. A method in a computer system for parsing information before updating data in a main database, the main database having fact tables and dimension tables, the method comprising:

creating a fact table and a dimension table corresponding to a fact table and dimension table of the main database;

identifying from the information entities for the created fact table and dimension table;

storing the identified entries in the created fact table and dimension table; and

analyzing the entries stored in the created fact table and dimension table.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the parsed information relates to user interactions with web pages.

12. The method of claim 10 including updating data in the main database based on the entries in the created fact table and dimension table.

13. The method of claim 10 wherein the created fact table and dimension table are stored in main memory.

14. The method of claim 10 wherein the created fact and dimension table are stored in non-persistent memory.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein the created fact and dimension table are stored in temporary memory.

16. The method of claim 10 wherein the created fact and dimension table are destroyed after information in the main database is updated based on the created fact and dimension table.

17. The method of claim 10 wherein the data in the main database is updated based on an ordering of fact and dimension tables.

18. A method in a computer system for identifying navigation paths through web pages based on user navigation information, the method comprising:

analyzing the user navigation information to identify entries associated with the same user; and

for each user,

identifying the web pages that are accessed by the user; and

storing an indication of the identified web pages as a navigation path in a persistent database.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein a sequence of identified web pages for a user is designated as a session.

21. A method in a computer for processing navigation information for web pages, the method comprising:

selecting an entry of the navigation information;

identifying a uniform resource identifier of the selected entry; and

when the identified uniform resource identifier satisfies a match criterion, storing in a persistent database an indication that the entry matches the criterion.

22. The method of claim 21 wherein criterion indicates that the entry is for a web pages of a certain category.

23. The method of claim 21 wherein the criterion identifies an event.

24. The method of claim 21 wherein the criterion specifies a type of web page.

25. A method in a computer system for identifying a user who accesses a web page, the method comprising:

providing an indication of a request for a second web page, the request including second information identifying a user who requested the second web page and first information identifying a user who requested a first web page that included a reference to the second web page; and

indicating the first information and the second information identify the same user.

26. The method of claim 25 wherein the first information is included as information of a referrer.

27. The method of claim 25 including storing a mapping of the first information to the second information.

28. The method of claim 27 including checking the mapping to determine whether user information corresponds to a user identified with other information.

29. The method of claim 25 wherein the first information and second information are provided by different web domains.

30. A method in a computer system for identifying high-level events from low-level events, the method comprising:

providing a plurality of event definitions that map low-level events to high-level events; and

for each low-level event,

determining whether the low-level event matches a provided event definition; and

when a low-level event matches an event definition, persistently storing an indication of the high-level event associated with the matching event definition.

31. The method of claim 30 wherein the low-level events are navigation events.

32. The method of claim 30 wherein the low-level events are derived from click stream information.

33. The method of claim 30 wherein the indication of the high-level event is persistently stored in a data warehouse.

34. A method in a computer system for processing click stream data, the method comprising:

receiving time synchronization information for the click stream data;

adjusting times associated with the click stream data based on the received time synchronization information; and

persistently storing the adjusted times.

35. The method of claim 34 wherein the time synchronization information is based on current time information received from a web server associated with the click stream data.

36. The method of claim 35 including sending a request to the web server for current time information.

37. The method of claim 34 wherein the time synchronization information is based on current time information of a web server and base time information.

38. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a computer system to parse information before updating data in a main database, the main database having fact tables and dimension tables, by a method comprising:

creating fact tables and dimension tables corresponding to fact tables and dimension tables of the main database;

identifying from the information entries for the created fact tables and dimension tables;

storing the identified entries in the created fact tables and dimension tables; and

analyzing the entries stored in the created fact tables and dimension tables.

39. The computer-readable medium of claim 38 wherein the parsed information relates to user interactions with web pages.

40. The computer-readable medium of claim 38 including updating data in the main database based on the entries in the created fact tables and dimension tables.

41. The computer-readable medium of claim 38 wherein the created fact tables and dimension tables are stored in main memory.

42. The computer-readable medium of claim 38 wherein the created fact tables and dimension tables are stored in non-persistent memory.

43. The computer-readable medium of claim 38 wherein the created fact and dimension tables are stored in temporary memory.

44. The computer-readable medium of claim 38 wherein the created fact and dimension tables are destroyed after information in the main database is updated based on the created fact and dimension tables.

45. The computer-readable medium of claim 38 wherein the data in the main database is updated based on an ordering of fact and dimension tables.

46. A method in a computer system for processing of search strings, the method comprising:

identifying a search string in a log file;

identifying a canonical form of the search string; and

storing the identified canonical form so that subsequent processing of the search string uses the canonical form.

47. The method of claim 46 wherein the identifying of a canonical form includes stemming of a word in the search string.

48. The method of claim 46 wherein the identifying of a canonical form includes first or last word grouping.

49. The method of claim 46 wherein the identifying of a canonical form includes removal of spaces between words.