Discover data model

Discover Report Builder uses a dimensional data model that is populated by event-based mechanisms to deliver a reporting facility of unprecedented power and flexibility to manage the customer experience of your web application. Events and event-related mechanisms are developed and tested through the Discover Event Manager, which is integrated into the Discover Portal.

Structural Overview

An event is a condition that is detected in the session data stream that triggers an action.

A hit attribute is a specified start tag and end tag in session data that can be referenced as a condition for one or more events. Hit Attributes can also be explicit text strings in the data. Hit Attributes are not directly applicable to reporting. Hit Attributes are defined in the Discover Event Manager.

An event is associated with one or more report groups, which are collections of dimensions on which you can report simultaneously.

  • A dimension is a list of values that are associated with an event. This list of values can be fixed or can be generated from the session data stream every hour.
  • A fact is the data entity that combines an event and a report group. Facts are the essential storage mechanism for reporting data. Some facts can have fact values, which are event instance data that can be configured in the event definition.
  • A label is a grouping mechanism for event and dimension objects. You can organize a set of related objects under a single label. Labels have no impact on data processing.

Basics

Discover captures all HTTP or HTTPS transactions between the visitors to your web application and the servers that serve the application to them. Each request from the visitor and the corresponding response from the web server are forwarded to Discover for capture, processing, analysis, and reporting.

  • A request is a message that is sent from the client, typically the visitor's browser, to the server for one or more files.
  • A response is the information that is sent from the web server back to the client. Any binary content in the response is typically dropped from Discover capture.

A single request and a single response together form a hit , which is the basic unit of capture in Discover.

The sequence of hits that are captured from a single visitor's contiguous experience with your web application is asession.