CAWAL: A novel unified analytics framework for enterprise web applications and multi-server environments

In web analytics, cloud-based solutions have limitations in data ownership and privacy, whereas client-side user tracking tools face challenges such as data accuracy and a lack of serverside metrics. This paper presents the Combined Analytics and Web Application Log (CAWAL) framework as an alternative model and an on-premises framework, offering web analytics with application logging integration. CAWAL enables precise data collection and cross-domain tracking in web farms while complying with data ownership and privacy regulations. The framework also improves software diagnostics and troubleshooting by incorporating applicationspecific data into analytical processes. Integrated into an enterprise-grade web application, CAWAL has demonstrated superior performance, achieving approximately 24% and 85% lower response times compared to Open Web Analytics (OWA) and Matomo, respectively. The empirical evaluation demonstrates that the framework eliminates certain limitations in existing tools and provides a robust data infrastructure for enhanced web analytics.