Power BI Desktop Dashboard for IIS Log Analysis - Improved performance of PowerShell data prep script

This is the third post in the "Power BI Desktop Dashboard for IIS Log Analysis" series.

Power BI Desktop Dashboard for IIS Log Analysis
Power BI Desktop Dashboard for IIS Log Analysis - C# for IIS log parsing instead of PowerShell
Power BI Desktop Dashboard for IIS Log Analysis - Improved performance of PowerShell data prep script

Here we will be discussing how the data preparation process is enhanced by just using the LogParser command. In the initial versions, the time to prepare CSV from the .log file was high if the cs-byes and sc-bytes columns were missing. That is because the approach taken was to load the CSV file into PowerShell and add additional columns with a default value.

This time the approach changed a little bit and completely avoided the need to load CSV files into PowerShell. Logic is as follows

1. Try to convert the input log files as-is on the assumption that the log contains all the required fields including cs-bytes and sc-bytes. This uses LogParser.exe
2. In case of error, use the same LogParser.exe file with a slightly different query which selects '0 as cs-bytes, 0 as sc-bytes'. 

Click here to see the code changes in GitHub repo.

The fix is not rocket science. It is an obvious thing everybody knows but unfortunately missed in the earlier phase. Thanks, Wade Mascia for pointing out.

Happy Analyzing...