PMDF Statistics


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Chapter 8
Release notes for Version 3.1

The only difference between 3.1 and 3.0 is added support for OpenVMS IA64. The rest of this chapter describes the changes made from version 2.6 to version 3.0

8.1 Functional Enhancements

The following are functional enhancements to that of the base 2.6 version.

8.1.1 Summary Reports

In addition to the traditional matrix report, PMDF-Stats can now produce a summary report. This report contains a one line summary for each group, reporting the total number and volume of messages into and out of that group. In addition, it can include the number of mailboxes (unique localparts) found within the records for each group.

8.1.2 Site Reports

PMDF-Stats can now produce a separate summary report for each group (each in its own file). This contains the same information from the overall Summary Report for this group, as well as extra information about fax and service group usage. In addition, PMDF-Stats can list all the localparts found in records for this group, together with the total number and volume of mail sent and received by that user.

8.1.3 Transit Statistics

PMDF-Stats can produce transit statistics for each destination group by calculating the average time lapse between "E" and "D" records for each message.

8.1.4 Fax Analysis

PMDF-Stats can now anaylze records produced by the PMDF-Fax layered products. It processes the "S" records produced by the g3_to_fax channel to produce statistics of the total fax transmit time and total number of pages sent.

8.1.5 Mailbox Reporting

PMDF-Stats can now track overall mailbox utilization (localparts). The results can be displayed in the Summary and Site reports.

8.1.6 New /ADDRESS qualifier

The /ADDRESS qualifier can be used as an alternative to the /SENDER and /RECEIVER qualifiers. The /ADDRESS qualifier will cause PMDF-Stats to select records that contain the specified address in either the sender or recipient address.

8.1.7 New /SKIP_CHANNEL qualifier

The /SKIP_CHANNEL qualifier causes PMDF-Stats to disregard records produced by intermediate channels. Before this, in order to avoid counting twice mail messages that traversed intermediate channels, it was necessary to omit the "logging" keyword on them, or to prefilter such records prior to analysis.

8.1.8 Changes to Group File Format

The format of the Group Definition file has been extended to provide for the specification of long group names (used in the summary and site reports) and flag keywords (used to specify which groups are to be analyzed for mailbox statistics, which are fax groups etc). The new format is upward compatible with the old one, unless you were using any of the following characters in the group name: "[", "(", ")", "]".

8.2 Bug Fixes

The following bugs were fixed (where patches were provided to the 2.6 release, the release version information is provided in parentheses).

8.2.1 Elimination of format overflows

In previous versions of PMDF-Stats, large numeric output could result in format overflows. This was frequently true of large volumes of mail traffic. In Version 3.x, volumes are expressed as floating point numbers in megabytes rather than kilobyte integers. If an output value (integer or floating point) does not fit in the field, it is converted to exponential format.

8.2.2 Added support for "tagged" fields in MAIL.LOG

Add support for changes to the MAIL.LOG format in PMDF 5.2. They introduced a new field between the sender and recipient addresses. This new field has a "rfc822;" prefix which we check for. Any fields with a prefix tag are ignored (2.6-3).

8.2.3 Bug in /INCOMING qualifier

Due to changes in the size of the time field in PMDF 5.2 (extended to centiseconds), selection of records using the /INCOMING qualifier would fail to match the channel (2.6-4).

8.2.4 Support for multicharacter code field

PMDF 6.0 introduced additional code fields, including code fields that exceed one character in length. Previous versions of PMDF-Stats would not recognize records containing these codes (the problem was limited to records produced by SASL or TLS SMTP channels). PMDF-Stats 3.x recognizes and handles these code fields.

8.2.5 Recognition of Abbreviated Qualifiers

PMDF-Stats will now regard /OUT as a valid abbreviation for /OUTPUT, and /TO as an abbreviation for /TO_GROUP. Previously these would be regarded as ambiguous as they would clash with /OUTGOING and /TOTAL.

8.2.6 Support for additional PMDF Options

Prior to 3.0, the use of the LOG_NODE and LOG_PROCESS options in the PMDF Option File would cause PMDF-Stats to fail. This was because these options caused PMDF to insert extra fields between the time field and the incoming channel name. In addition, these fields to not contain 'tag' prefixes. PMDF-Stats 3.x now recognizes the presence of these extra fields and skips them.

8.2.7 Non-standard Records being selected incorrectly

Fixed bug whereby non-standard records (i.e. those with codes other than E, D or R) would be selected if the user specified filters such as size or address qualifiers.

8.2.8 Documentation

PMDF-Stats documentation has been rewritten using DEC Document. This allows the documentation to be shipped in the following formats: Note that LN03 format is no longer provided.

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