Interpreting usage data

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1

(imported topic written by srhconsulting91)

I’ve been given a CSV file from a Big Fix installation to analyze, but no docs :frowning: Most of it I’ve been able to suss out, but I have a question about usage data that I’ve not been able to find an answer to here.

I have several columns of data like this:

Application Usage Summary: Adobe Acrobat

280, ( Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:48:47 -0500 ), ( Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:20:44 -0500 ), ( 8 days, 09:44:33 )

I think these fields are:

  • Total number of times the application has launched between
  • Begin date and
  • End date and for a
  • Total run time

Is this correct?

I have a second column that looks like this:

Application Usage: Adobe Acrobat

( Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:51:54 -0500 to Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:02:16 -0500 ), False

How does this compare with the previous data? Is this just:

  • From this time
  • To this time
  • Whether the app was in use?

thanks in advance for any answers/pointers.

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

This data comes from our “old style application tracking”. There is a better way to do it using our DSS SAM product (now called “Tivoli Endpoint Manager for Software Usage Analysis”). Using this product will not only give you a much more detailed set of information about applications and their usage, but you can also mine the database easier. I recommend looking at this solution because it is far more powerful than what you are doing.

To answer your specific question:

  • Yes. You have the fields mostly right. The two time columns (2 & 3) are “first time seen” and “last time seen”.
  • The second property that you give with the time range can effectively be ignored. It is used to generate that usage graph on the page in the Dashboard. This property is a “statistical property”, which means that there is a lot of data that gets correlated at the server and what you see is only a small part of the data… but I suggest that you don’t waste anymore time on this property unless you have a Masters or PhD in Statistics and about 2 weeks of your time to figure out what is going on with these properties.

Ben