Importing Cookies

When a user browses your site, the cookie is stored in the Web log files. The Commerce Server Web log import DTS task reads the cookie data and decrypts the user ID, enabling the cookie data to be associated with the profile data. This enables you to analyze the user data.

Note

• If you are using rolling key encryption for cookies, you must import the IIS logs before you import the profile data. Otherwise, the Commerce Server DTS tasks cannot decrypt the authentication tickets in the logs.

When the data is imported, it is parsed for the user ID. Each instance of the user ID becomes a row in the Data Warehouse. The user ID is the primary key of the row, so that when analysis is performed on the user data, the data is accessed by the user ID.

The Business Analytics system identifies users by looking in the W3C Extended Log for the following items, listed in order of priority:

• Cookie
• User name
• Client IP + client browser string
• Client IP only

The Report preparation DTS task populates data into the Buyer Visits cube. The Buyer Visits cube correlates user sales activity with Web browsing activity, by using the RegisteredUserIDs of the transactions and the RegisteredUserIDs associated with the Web browsing. This correlation of RegisteredUserIDs requires that your site use cookies.

By default, the Solution Sites are configured so cookies are encrypted. The Web server log import DTS task internally calls an authentication function that decrypts cookies and returns the proper user ID. If you choose not to encrypt cookies, the function does not properly return the user ID because the cookie is URL encoded.

Following is a description of how cookies are imported when you configure your site to enable or disable Autocookie mode.

• Autocookie mode enabled. After you run the Transaction data import DTS task, the user transactions are stored in the OrderGroup table (and a few others) in the Data Warehouse. The OrderGroup entry is keyed to a RegisteredUserID. Web log imports of the associated log file containing the users' browsing activity can be correlated with the transaction activity only if cookies are enabled.

  When you enable cookies on your site, a cookie containing a Registered User identifier is written to the cookie field of the log file. By importing the Web log files into the Data Warehouse, the Report preparation DTS task can link the browsing activity to the transaction activity.

• Autocookie mode disabled. In this scenario, the RegisteredUserID is written as part of the query string information in the Web log file but the Web log import DTS task cannot store this information as the RegisteredUserID.

  The VisitsByUser view remains empty because the RegisteredUserIDs are missing from the VisitInfo table, which is populated during Web server log import.

• Cookieless mode (Active Directory). In this scenario, there are no cookies.

See Also

Analyzing Data from Cookies

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