Patrick McGovern, who managed SourceForge.net for five years, is now working at Splunk, a San Francisco-based company determined to help you learn to love your log files.

Earlier this month, Splunk released its first product, Splunk Server, which allows developers and sysadmins to index all of their log files (Apache, Sendmail, Cisco, MySQL, Oracle, etc.) in real time and search for issues.

The software is optimized for modern browsers and uses AJAX extensively to make searching fast and fluid. Patrick explains that the Splunk Server is a huge time-saver for people who have to troubleshoot issues with mission-critical computers and software. Users can perform keyword searches, use boolean terms, and look for related values between different systems.

Even if you don't routinely work with log files, please be sure to check out this software to see how AJAX techniques are used for type-ahead and interactive graphing. It's an impressive show of what is possible with AJAX and modern browsers.

The Splunk Server is available as a free download. Give it a try and let Patrick (Patrick@splunk.com) know what you think; he would appreciate your feedback.

Download at: http://www.splunk.com/