Log4View: Log Visualization Tool
First, an apology. I've posted this project here a few days ago. The project was showcasing an idea, but did not show anything substantial or interesting, and I had only invested a few hours into it. To make matters worse, I generated a post via ChatGPT, which in hindsight looked like total garbage, and was generally a dick move.
Second, about me. I'm T, a security researcher at Microsoft. A lot of my work revolves around identifying user behavior in our Azure cloud infrastructure. Naturally, this happens through mountains of logs, which I query on our platform. However, I always felt like viewing this data in the form of a boring gray table is a missed opportunity. I think many good insights can be gained from viewing bland data in creative ways. So, I came up with log4view as a single-evening project just to show it around my office.
Fast forward to now, it's Friday night and I've spent most of my weekend working on features and improvements. I think this is a really cool and fun project, and I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts and ideas.
So, third, my project.
What Log4View Does
Log4view is a tool for technical people who work with logs to view their data in a more visually stimulating way - in the hopes of bringing new insights and ideas. Log4view will generate up to 25 nodes per page, and a potentially endless number of pages total. This amount of nodes is hardcoded, but you can edit the variable which is acceptable_number_of_nodes_in_page. Ideally you will work with up to a couple hundred logs, but if you choose to expand the above variable, the sky's the limit.
Log4view accepts a file path to your data, and a secondary key. The tool will then create main nodes made up of secondary keys, and sub-nodes of the main outer key of your data structure.
The output is a color coded collection of pages of network graphs, each featuring nodes and edges, and more data about each node on hovering your cursor over it.
Target Audience
My target audience is people who view mountains of logs as I do, and who try to glean insights from them. I can't even imagine how many professions this includes, but I reckon many in IT, Data Science, some Engineering, etc.
Comparison
I checked out a few other commercial tools which claim to be log visualizers, but the closest I've found is SolarWinds who create real-time view of logs with a few charts and colors.
This further emphasizes my point. Creative insights require creative views. I genuinely think the more creative ways you can view and think about your data, the better you'll understand it.
I hope I'm right.
Anyway, here's the link. Hope you like it, and if you don't, hope you're willing to share your thoughts with me :)