Data Model

About this guide

Read this guide if

• you'd like to know how to aggregate, store and serve new analytics data with your plugin
• you'd like to know what the Archiving Process is and how it is used to automatically aggregate and cache analytics data
• you'd like to know how analytics data is stored and manipulated in PHP
• you'd like to know what segments are and how you can define your own

About analytics

Analyzing data means searching for patterns in a set of things. In Matomo (formerly Piwik) those things are visits, web actions and goal conversions.

We search for patterns by reducing the set of things. Or in other words, we search for patterns by grouping individual things together to create subsets that are both recognizable and meaningful.

In Matomo the result of that grouping is the analytics data. Analytics data is stored, displayed and exposed through an API. Read on to learn what this data contains, how Matomo calculates and stores it, and how it is made available to Matomo users.

Data workflow

Here is the workflow that data follows in Matomo:

• raw data is collected from trackers and stored as log data
• the archiving process aggregates log data into archive data (see also the archiving behavior specification)
• archive data is loaded and presented into reports

What's next?

• Log data
• The archiving process
• Archiving Behavior Specification
• Archive data
• Reports