Do you want to find Brute Force Attacks against your Exchange Server? Would you like to know who is spamming you? Do you need to monitor the performance of your IIS Server? Are there intruders out there you would like to find? Would you like to build user logon reports from your Windows Server? Would you like to export your logs to XML? Would you like working scripts to automate all of these tasks and many more for you? If so, this book is for you... "Microsoft Log Parser Toolkit" is co-authored by Microsoft's Log Parser developer providing a complete reference to this SQL-Query driven log analysis tool. The book and accompanying Web site also provide dozens of customized, working scripts, queries, and templates for Windows Server, Snort IDS, Exchange Server, IIS, ISA Server, Snort and more.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

Dream Book on Dream Tool - 2006-10-04
Reviewer Rating:
This tool is amazing in that it supports a variety input and output formats including reading in syslog and outputting into databases are pretty Excel charts. The filtering uses an SQL syntax. The tool comes with a DLL that can be registered, so that scripters (VBScript, Perl, JScript, etc.) can access the power of this tool.

This book not only covers the tool (alternative being to scrape the network for complex incomprehensible snippets), but shows real world practical solutions with the tool, from analyzing web logs, system events, security and network scans, etc.

This tool is just heavensend for analysis and transforming of any data in a variety of formats. The book and tool go hand-in-hand, and I highly recommend incorporating this into your tool (and book) into your tool kit and/or scripting endeavors immediately.

Superb book on a powerful Windows tool - 2009-12-29
Reviewer Rating:
Log Parser can be a Windows sys admin's dream come true. In one tool, it can input from a large variety of sources (file system, registry, log files, IIS log flavors, command line tools, etc.), has an extensible architecture, provides a SQL-like syntax to query, and provides a variety of output formats, including graphs, text, syslog, XML, HTML, email, and such.

The book is written by the author of the tool. The tool's interface appears simple. The power of it is revealed in the variety of uses to which it can be put -- those uses involve the sophisticated command variations possible. The book reveals precisely this.

If you're overwhelmed by system information and how to monitor that without a bunch of 3rd party tools, take a look at Log Parser. It may be just what you need.

Syngress was acquired by Elsevier Publishing. The source files are now available at [...]

Good useful toolkit - 2009-11-03
Reviewer Rating:
Being able to easily correlate information from multiple event logs is a big help.

Many of the examples are aimed at maintaining and improving security. I found the techniques described helpful for chasing linked defects in a multiple-machine server farm.

Unfortunately, the examples from the book are no longer available on the publisher's web site.

More Examples! - 2009-08-31
Reviewer Rating:
This book is factual, accurate, and authoritative. But I don't like technical books that read like technical books. "Huh?" you say.

If I were to write this book, I would make it easier to understand with ample examples. It's better than Log Paser's Help, but not by a whole lot. I believe that technical books should be reasonably easy to understand - even by the non-technical.

My 3 star rating is just my opinion/experience. Others may find this book to be just the ticket.

Great book!! - 2008-08-28
Reviewer Rating:
This is a must have for any systems engineer who needs to take a proactive approach in system monitoring. Used in conjunction with ASP and a backend database, real time monitoring apps are a snap to build.