capturing form data

[Jeff Wisniewski]

Hi,

We recently implemented a new books list service that allows users to
select subject area and some sorting and limiting parameter via an
online form, and generate a list of new materials purchased. Use use PHP
to talk to a mySQL database, with a lot of Perl to pull data from an
Oracle database that populate the mySQL.

My question is: how can we go about capturing and analyzing data on the
choices that users are making i.e. how many times has this subject been
selected versus this subject? Is this submitted data logged in the
server logs? We've analyzed our logs using webtrends and can get
standard stats (hits, views, visitor sessions, etc. ) on the form page
itself, but as of yet haven't figured out how to get at what users are
submitting. Do we need to use more sophisticated log analysis software?

Thanks in advance.

Jeff Wisniewski
Web Services Librarian
University Library System
University of Pittsburgh