pathes of information ...

From: markus habermas (amos_at_gmx.at)
Date: 07/30/04 

Date: 30 Jul 2004 01:14:43 -0700

dear list,

I am facing the following problem: in a database I have got N
information items (datasets) which can be searched through by users. I
can generate a list of accessed items e.g. items 1,10,22,15....130
(this is like a clickstream in web site analysis) were accessed for
each user.

the ideal solution now would be an analysis that shows me an average
"path" through the data. the mentioned clickstream analysis would be
the ideal solution but the problem is, that the server logs do not get
all the necessary information (because the whole process is database
driven) and therefore the analysis does not work ...

as a second analysis a "types" of searches would be interesting. i can
categorize information e.g., items 1 to 10 are category A items 2 to
40 are category B and so on. is it possible to extract information
search types when a user 1 accesses cat A 3 times and B 2 times in
comparison to user 2 who accesses A 1 and B 8 ....

i am aware that these ideas might sound vague :-)

thanks for your help

best

markus

ps: this message was also postet to comp.stat.spss