Generating Sample Analytics Data

In Sitecore 8, the information you see in reports is not the raw data that was collected in MongoDB. Analytics data is processed and aggregated into indexes and databases that are then used for reporting. This makes it a bit more difficult to generate data.

Flow of Information in the xDB

• A contact visits your site and browses around
• On session end, contact and interaction data is flushed to the collection database (MongoDB)
• At regular intervals, that information is aggregated and transformed. The aggregated data ends up in two places:
  • The analytics index, used primarily but the Experience Profile search page and the List Manager
  • The reporting SQL database, used primarily by the Experience Analytics reports

Creating Sample Data

Blog posts about generating sample data in the xDB:

• Refreshing Analytics Reports
• Populating Experience Profile data
• Generating Meaningful xDB Data with JMeter
• Rebuilding the Sitecore Analytics index (make sure you delete the index before you rebuild!)
• Data Sanitizer for xDB (GitHub)