General Operation

Current features of the program consist of:

• Processing log files and outputting chat in whatever format you specify.
• Extracting data from your logs for use in database and web applications.
• Storage of extracted data from your logs for future reference.
• Creation of walkthroughs for quests by using chat channels in game to take notes.

You can drag and drop log files on the main window or browse your computer for them. Once a log file is loaded, the character’s name is extracted from the file name, or can be entered in the box labeled “Your Character's Name”. Upon loading of your log file there some brief processing is done to extract player names, NPC names and channel information. After the initial processing is complete click the “Process Log” button to have the program actually extract all the data from your log files and categorize it. Once this process is complete you will be able to export specific types of data to MS Excel, store in various database platforms, create walkthroughs, or output the chat data with your specified formats.

Initially many of the options will have defaults already loaded at startup if you have never run the program before. You can edit various options through the “Options” menu.

• “File Options” will allow you to edit various options that include:
• Location of you EverQuest 2 installation.
• Location to use to store temporary data for processing.
• Behavior of various open and save dialog boxes.
• Enable the software to load at windows startup and archive your EQ2 log files at selected intervals.
• “Database Options” allows you to set specific options for interfacing with various database platforms.
• Paradox table storage locations for storing data locally using the Borland Database Engine (BDE).
• MySQL server connection options.
• PostgreSQL server connection options.
• “Filters” will allow you to filter the output of chat data from your log files in various methods.
• “Parsing Options” are various options dealing with the output of chat data.
• “Reload Default Options” retrieves the options stored to your system’s registry when using “Set Current Options as Default”
• “Set Current Options as Default” will store all program options to the registry and will load at next program startup.

Various tools have been built into the software to make the management and extraction of data from your log files easy. Once a log file has been processed you can export various types of data, store the data and export the data from your log files to MS Excel.

• “Clean Log” is the same as clicking the “Process Log” button on the main window.
• “Export Chat Data” exports all chat data from the processed log to Excel
• “Export Mob Data” exports mob data, without locations of kills.
• “Export Mob Kill Data” will export mob data and also export the locations where mobs were killed.
• “Export Item Data” will export all items found in your log files.
• “Export Loot Data” will export item data as well as where and from what the items were looted.
• “Export Location Data” will export all instances of locations in your log file that occur when using the /loc command from within the game.
• “Export System Messages” will export all data that is not combat messages and does not fall in any of the above categories.
• “Create Walkthrough” is a set of procedures for extracting notes from a specific chat channel, mob kills, item looting and location logging from your log files to rich text.
• “Query Data” allows you to use standard SQL (dependant on database platform) to query the tables generated from processing and exporting the data from log files as well as view data structures and table data directly.
• “Store Data” takes the data from a processed log file and stores it to the selected database platform in “Database Options”