Should I turn off statistics tracking on client site?

Permalink 1 user found helpful
I've seen in the c5 FAQ and other references throughout the forum (and other sites) that the dashboard statistics can be disabled. Apparently they can cause excessive resource consumption. In 5.3.3.1, is this still an issue? Does the PageStatistics table eventually wrap around or does it keep growing without bounds? This is not a problem for me now but I am trying to decide if I should disable them on my client site before it becomes a problem. Thanks.

 
ScottC replied on at Permalink Reply
ScottC
i haven't really tracked this that much, but i would modify the insert statement to insert delayed which will do the insert when the db engine is free to do so instead of giving up on the stats entirely.
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
also disabling stats can disable other features as some addons and stuff rely on the code it inserts
dg1 replied on at Permalink Reply
Do you know what other features or addons disabling stats would affect?

I read about the issue and how to disable stats onhttp://defunctlife.com/2009/08/how-to-disable-concrete5-site-statis... and I was concerned about it creating large database tables and slowing things down unnecessarily.

I don't want to break anything else though. I disabled it on my local system and everything seems to be fine but if you have more detail, I'd appreciate it.
Tony replied on at Permalink Best Answer Reply
Tony
i think that the forums package may depend on the statistics, but aside from that i think it's pretty safe.
dg1 replied on at Permalink Reply
Thanks everyone. I'm still wondering if the issues noted about the stats consuming resources is even still an issue. Do the stats grow without bounds or do they wrap around? Are other customers seeing problems? Thanks.
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
my stats are fine, they take up like no space and i don't see a performance difference
jgarcia replied on at Permalink Reply
jgarcia
I run a site that gets 10-15k visits per day...been running it on Concrete 5.4 for probably 6 months now. The site crashed this evening because the PageStatistics table crashed.

I frantically found every reference to PageStatistics and commented it out of the code. Once the site was back up, I repaired the table and realized it had over 1.6 MILLION records.

I do like the stats built in to C5, but it seems like there might be a better method - increment a single record, rather than add a record every time someone visits the site...or something.

I know this is not a common issue for most people, but I just wanted to throw this out there.
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
well, thats kinda rare, look at concrete5.org
jgarcia replied on at Permalink Reply
jgarcia
I'd be interested to know their setup? I'm sure getting around the same kind of traffic, if not more. Adding a record for every single page view just seems unreasonable to me.

So...andrew, franz? Any insight? Do you guys have this issue? Is your PageStatistics table huge?
dg1 replied on at Permalink Reply
I never felt confident on this issue, and I wasn't going to risk it because it looked to me like the table would fill up without bounds. I turned the stats off on the site I was worried about. I would also be interested if anyone has more insight into this so I know whether or not I can enable the stats on any future sites. Thanks.
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
yes. On a high volume site I would turn it off or flush the table by hand.

You shouldn't have a lot of issues on performance outside of that graph on the dashboard home. That's the first thing to disable cause it does a horrible job summing things up quickly. You can leave the writes on as there aren't a lot of reads elsewhere in the system, but yeah by the time the table is 1.6 million rows you might want to flush it. ;)

I'll have Andy weigh in here too, but that's my perspective - we never sat down and architected the stats to be a solution for huge problems.
andrew replied on at Permalink Reply
andrew
Franz is right: generally, writing to the page statistics table should be fast. The dashboard graph is another story, sadly.

Ideally, we'd have some process that would allow statistics summarization so that the entire page statistics table didn't have to be queried, resulting in that slow graph. We just haven't done that yet.

There is one caveat, though: in 5.4.1, we're introducing full page caching. With our lazy db loading, if a page is cached entirely, when it loads it won't even initiate a connection to the database, making it even faster. This will ONLY happen, however, when you disable page statistics, because otherwise every page load needs to have a db connection. Fortunately, in 5.4.1 we've added a dashboard option to disable page statistics, making it easier to do. This is probably the way to go for high traffic sites using a third party stats engine.
jgarcia replied on at Permalink Reply
jgarcia
Thanks for the input guys...

Is the full page caching fully functional in 5.4.1b2?
andrew replied on at Permalink Reply
andrew
Yep. It's in the dashboard settings page globally, and can be setup on a page by page basis.
xandre replied on at Permalink Reply
Is it safe to flush the PageStatistics-table after disabling statistics?
dg1 replied on at Permalink Reply
I just cleared out the table using phpmyadmin as instructed inhttp://defunctlife.com/2009/08/how-to-disable-concrete5-site-statis... It worked fine for me.