Regaining Data Ownership: Introducing the CAWAL Framework

Article & Journal: CAWAL: A novel unified analytics framework for enterprise web applications and multi-server environments Published in: Information Processing & Management

Study Summary: This paper formally introduces the CAWAL (Combined Analytics and Web Application Log) framework. CAWAL is a unified solution designed to replace third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics for enterprises that require strict data ownership. It merges the depth of application logs with the breadth of web analytics. The framework successfully handles multi-server (web farm) environments, ensuring session continuity and data integrity without relying on client-side cookies alone.

Behind the Research: In an era of GDPR and strict data privacy regulations, relying on external "black box" analytics services is a risk for many institutions. We built CAWAL to offer a transparent, on-premise alternative. The real challenge was maintaining session integrity across distributed servers behind load balancers. CAWAL solves this by embedding analytics directly into the application logic. This means you own 100% of your data, raw and enriched, ready for deep analysis.

Citation & DOI: Canay, O., & Kocabıçak, Ü. (2024). CAWAL: A novel unified analytics framework for enterprise web applications and multi-server environments. Information Processing & Management, 61(3), 103617. DOI: 10.1016/j.ipm.2023.103617