As time progresses I am becoming far more comfortable and impressed with Microsoft’s Log Parser. For one thing, I am awed at how it processes so fast. I processed 404 logs (over 4.6GB) in seconds, not minutes or hours as I had first thought. The command line syntax is also quite powerful. This tool allows you to precisely and quickly analyze data without a lot of overhead.

I had mentioned in the first post that another bonus is the COM interface. All the power of this command-line tool can be wrapped in a nice GUI interface, which is exactly what I had done. After reading about the interfaces in the accompanying help file I imported the Type Library for Log Parser into Delphi® (I have Delphi® 5 and Delphi® 2005 installed on my development machine and I worked with Log Parser in both versions) and installed the new components. One thing to note is that the TLogQueryClass is the only class that seemed to work properly after importing the library. Each of the Input and Output format components kept on reporting invalid log formats when I passed them to the TLogQueryClass method. I tried numerous ways to get them working. This was/is more of a nuisance more than anything else. The help file clearly lists (I have also included them in this source) the classes which can easily be created as variants.

To get started with a simple example of how to use the Log Parser interfaces I started a new application and placed a TFileEdit, TStaticText, TListBox and three (3) TButtons on the TForm. Rather than go into a verbose explanation I figured I’d just post some sample code and let the code explain what is going on. Here is a wonderful byproduct of living in the 21st century; there is no guarantee or warranty, expressed or implied, concerning the applicability of code and techniques included in this example. This example code is supplied AS IS. If you wish to use this code or technique, it is your responsibility to test and certify the code in your project.

Button1 (caption:= ‘Output’) shows how to use an InputContextClass and OutputContextClass.
Button2 (caption:= ‘LogParser Version’) shows how to retrieve the version information from TLogQueryClass.
Button3 (caption:= ’Record’) shows how to retrieve the information into a RecordSetClass from an InputContextClass and iterate through each of the records. In this example I add each entry to a list box.



If anyone else does anything with this interface I welcome the posting of examples. This is it for now, time to go off and expand upon the BPACLer application.

Labels: Apps, Code, Delphi, Information, Tech, WIN32