How can I increase the Urchin database size limit beyond 60,000 records?

Every Urchin report record is maintained in a centralized database fileset. The files that comprise the database are rotated monthly and there is a limit to how many unique records can be stored in the database every month per profile. In other words, Urchin will record a fixed number of unique record items every month for every profile. By default that global limit is set to 10,000 records, and each profile is configured to use this default limit. The global limit can be raised to 60,000 by editing the Process Settings screen in the Urchin console. But increasing the limit over 60,000 can only be achieved by using the "uconf-driver" utility.

Each profile can also be configured with a profile-specific database limit, so you can raise the limit for certain high- traffic profiles without affecting the default for other profiles. This is done in the Storage/DB screen of the Profile configuration. Like the global limit, it can only be raised to a maximum of 60,000 records from the web-based Urchin admin interface. Raising the limit beyond that requires use of the "uconf-driver" utility.

If you use uconf-driver to set a higher database limit, please note that there is a hard-coded limit of 500,000 records. However, caution must be used when increasing the database size beyond 60,000 records as it may affect disk space, log processing speed, and report delivery performance. It is strongly recommended that you increase the limit by no more than 25,000 records at a time so that you can find an acceptable compromise which gives you the increased database capacity you need, but still maintains an acceptable level of disk space usage and performance.

Technical note: Urchin's databases are based on hash table technology. Performance of these databases is good up to around 60,000 to 80,000 records, but increasing the database size beyond this can result in diminished performance. That is why the maximum database size can only bet set to 60,000 records in the web-based admin interface.

Here is the procedure for using the uconf-driver utility to increase the database limit beyond 60,000 records:

Open a command shell on the system running Urchin

Change directory to the "util" directory of the Urchin distribution. On a UNIX-type system this will typically be "/usr/local/urchin/util"; on Windows, "C:\Program Files\Urchin\util"

To change the global database limit, type the command:

  uconf-driver action=set_parameter recnum=2 cs_limitdbtable=XXX

where XXX is the new database size limit, e.g. 80000

To change a per-profile database limit, type the command:

uconf-driver action=set_parameter table=profile name=myprofile cs_limitdbtable=XXX

where myprofile is the name of the profile you wish to change, and XXX is the new database size limit.