Visuialize message flow from log files

Hello, for your convenience I made a detailed description below in order to avoid bad surprises. This doesn't mean it is more complex than a three word description. It is just for you. Please read and understand it completely, before providing your bid. Requirements: - ASP.NET, C# - Basic understanding of mail server and protocols - SQL (Query, Optimiziation, SPs) - .net Framework 3.5+ - SQL Server 2008+ (should be working with Express, too, so no agent can be used) - RegEx, Parsing - Ajax - Modern UI - Icons (which we can also re-distribute. If we should buy sth. let's discuss) - You can use DevExpress and Chilkat components if you want. We have licensed both. Deliverables: - Implemented solution designed as .ascx User Control - SQL scripts - Documented source code - Developed Helper tools if needed Environment: ============ There is a log database containing raw log data from our mail servers with a plain and easy structure. Keep in mind that there can be a few thousand new log entries per second (performance!) Log entries provide an overview of the message flow within the mail server. Log entries - due to multiple sessions - may not be written in a subsequental order. All log entries belonging to a message can be grouped by a unique message ID. When changing its state, the message ID can transform to another ID. This transformation is also logged (old ID ==> new ID) to the database. These entried must be found and parsed for further tracking of the new ID. I will provide you a sample database with log data. Requirements: ============= The log data contains the whole message flow. The task is bascially to visualize the message flow in a nice and graphical manner. So e.g. the user can analyze when the mail arrived at the server, how it was filtered maybe and when it got dropped into the inbox. If you have understood this text completely, please add the words message flow into your message. There are a few use cases: 1. Message arrived at the server and is delivered to an inbox. 2. Message arrived at the server and was recognized as spam by SpamAssassin and filed in to spam folder. 3. Message is sent from the local server and leaves the server for an external recipient. 4. Message is sent from a local account to a local account and so never leaves the server 5. Message arrived at the server and is forwarded to another external server ... Within these use cases a few things can happen like treated as spam, mailbox unavailable, mailbox full, etc. I put much emphasis on the architecture of the use case and visualizing algorithms. It should be easy to maintain in order to add additional use cases, entities, rules, etc. - a basic, but very high skilled implementation of these five use cases is OK since adding other ones has to be easy in regard to implementation. I was able to develop a full prototype within one day with easy hard coded logic - but this is not the stated goal here. The basic entities for graphical display are: - Server - Mailbox - User - Filter - Error It should be possible to extend them easily. I also attached you a mock up for a rough understand of the UI. The UI should be designed in state-of-the start style. My mockup tool does not provide this, so don't take it as design template :-) - Give parameters for finding the message flow - Extract the data from the log, show it into a grid - On double click visualize it - On another tab show the relevant raw log data If you think that it is necessary to preprocess the raw data into a more suitable structure in order to optimize the querying and visualizing, we can do that. But please provide the necessary scripts, maybe we need a long term, always running windows service which preprocesses the data constantly. We will perform a review of the provided sources.