Skip to main content

Importing Message Tracking Logs into a Database without using WMI

A while ago I wrote a little Message Tracking Log application that I posted here on OutlookExchange. Somebody asked me today for a way to import a lot of tracking logs that they have archived in a directory where using WMI wasn't really going to be applicable. Fortunately this isn't that hard a thing to do, the message tracking logs are in essence a tab delimited text file with a few twists. The first twist is you really want to ignore the first 5 lines and the second is there is a double Line Feed at the end of each line. But because this is consistent it isn't hard to script around this.

So to do the hardwork of sorting out the tab delimited data in VBS you can use the Split command which will split the contents of each line into separate array elements where the delimiter separates the column. You still need to apply the same functions such as converting GMT time to local time and the time and data retrievals are a little different as they are stored in a little bit of a weird format.

The last hurdle was to front the code with something that would go though every file in a directory which can be done using the filesystem object.

The result was the following script that imports tracking log data into the database out of the article I mentioned.



set shell = createobject("wscript.shell")
strValueName = "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\ActiveTimeBias"
minTimeOffset = shell.regread(strValueName)
toffset = datediff("h",DateAdd("n", minTimeOffset, now()),now())
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set Cnxn1 = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
strCnxn1 = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=d:\Trackinglog.mdb;"
Cnxn1.Open strCnxn1
set f = fso.getfolder("c:\logdir")
Set fc = f.Files
For Each file1 in fc
wscript.echo file1.path
importtodb(file1.path)
next
wscript.echo "Done"

function importtodb(fname)
set wfile = fso.opentextfile(fname,1,true)
for i = 1 to 5
wfile.skipline
next
nline = wfile.readline
do until wfile.AtEndOfStream
if instr(nline," ") then
inplinearray = Split(nline, " ", -1, 1)
if inplinearray(8) = "1020" or inplinearray(8) = "1028" then
ClientIP = inplinearray(2)
if (isnull(ClientIP)) then ClientIP = "N/A"
Entrytype = inplinearray(8)
if (isnull(Entrytype)) then Entrytype = "N/A"
Subject = inplinearray(18)
if (isnull(Subject)) then Subject = "N/A"
RecipientAddress1 = inplinearray(7)
if (isnull(RecipientAddress1)) then RecipientAddress1 = "N/A"
RecipientCount = inplinearray(13)
if (isnull(RecipientCount)) then RecipientCount = "N/A"
SenderAddress = inplinearray(19)
if (isnull(SenderAddress)) then SenderAddress = "N/A"
size1 = inplinearray(12)
if (isnull(size1)) then size1 = "N/A"
datearray = split(inplinearray(0),"-",-1,1)
timearray = split(inplinearray(1),":",-1,1)
odate = dateserial(datearray(0),datearray(1),datearray(2))
otime = timeserial(timearray(0),timearray(1),0)
odate = dateadd("h",toffset,cdate(odate & " " & otime))
wtowrite = "('" & condate(odate) & "','" & formatdatetime(odate,4) & "','" & ClientIP & "','" & EntryType & "','" & RecipientCount & "','" & SenderAddress & "','" & RecipientAddress1 & "','" & left(replace(subject,"'"," "),254) & "','" & size1 & "')"
sqlstate1 = "INSERT INTO TrackingLogRaw ( [Date], [Time], [client-ip], [Event-ID], NoRecipients, [Sender-Address], [Recipient-Address], [Message-Subject], [total-bytes] ) values " & wtowrite
Cnxn1.Execute(sqlstate1)
end if
end if
nline = wfile.readline
loop
wfile.close
set wfile = nothing
end function


function condate(date2con)
dtcon = date2con
if month(dtcon) < 10 then
if day(dtcon) < 10 then
qdat = year(dtcon) & "0" & month(dtcon) & "0" & day(dtcon)
else
qdat = year(dtcon) & "0" & month(dtcon) & day(dtcon)
end if
else
if day(dtcon) < 10 then
qdat = year(dtcon) & month(dtcon) & "0" & day(dtcon)
else
qdat = year(dtcon) & month(dtcon) & day(dtcon)
end if
end if
condate = qdat
end function

Popular posts from this blog

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Graph is limited to a m
Read more

Sending a Message in Exchange Online via REST from an Arduino MKR1000

This is part 2 of my MKR1000 article, in this previous post  I looked at sending a Message via EWS using Basic Authentication.  In this Post I'll look at using the new Outlook REST API  which requires using OAuth authentication to get an Access Token. The prerequisites for this sketch are the same as in the other post with the addition of the ArduinoJson library  https://github.com/bblanchon/ArduinoJson  which is used to parse the Authentication Results to extract the Access Token. Also the SSL certificates for the login.windows.net  and outlook.office365.com need to be uploaded to the devices using the wifi101 Firmware updater. To use Token Authentication you need to register an Application in Azure https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/add-common-consent-manually  with the Mail.Send permission. The application should be a Native Client app that use the Out of Band Callback urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob. You need to authorize it in you tenant (eg build a small ap
Read more

How to test SMTP using Opportunistic TLS with Powershell and grab the public certificate a SMTP server is using

Most email services these day employ Opportunistic TLS when trying to send Messages which means that wherever possible the Messages will be encrypted rather then the plain text legacy of SMTP.  This method was defined in RFC 3207 "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security" and  there's a quite a good explanation of Opportunistic TLS on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS .  This is used for both Server to Server (eg MTA to MTA) and Client to server (Eg a Message client like Outlook which acts as a MSA) the later being generally Authenticated. Basically it allows you to have a normal plain text SMTP conversation that is then upgraded to TLS using the STARTTLS verb. Not all servers will support this verb so if its not supported then a message is just sent as Plain text. TLS relies on PKI certificates and the administrative issue s that come around certificate management like expired certificates which is why I wrote th
Read more
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.