Glossary
General
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Property | A property is an entity the tracking engine is tracking. It is a website, app, or other digital property. |
| Hit | A hit is a single request to the tracking server. Hits are raw and yield no analytical value, after they're processed into events by the tracking pipeline, they can be used for analytics. |
| Event | An event is a single action that occurs on the property. Its relation to hit is 1-1. It is used to track the user's activity on the property. |
| User | A user is a person who visits the property. It is used to track the user's activity on the property. |
| Tracking URL | The endpoint that receives tracking data, e.g., https://global.t.d8a.tech/<property_id>/g/collect for d8a Cloud and GA4/gtag protocol. |
| Web tracker | Client-side tracking library that provides a GA4 gtag-style API and sends GA4 gtag-compatible requests to a d8a collector. |
Tracking pipeline
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Proto-session | A set of loosely connected Hits, that may in the future form one or more sessions. The hits are glued together by the identifiers (Client ID, SS). |
Identifiers
| Identifier type | GA4-compatible (measurement protocol) | Matomo-compatible (matomo.php) |
|---|---|---|
| Client ID – The ID assigned by the tracking engine to each device/browser combination, persisted in a cookie | client_id, user_pseudo_id | _id |
| User ID – The ID used in an internal user system, for example email, available after the login. The customer must manually set it as a tracking parameter; it's not automatically determined by the tracker | user_id | uid |
| Session stamp (SS) – Hash calculated on the backend from the incoming request elements. Currently it includes: IP address, Property ID and a subset of http request headers. Inspect the code for more details. | none, calculated on the backend | none, calculated on the backend |
| Client-assigned session ID (CASI) – The session ID explicitly set by the client in the tracking request. This value is not used for backend sessionization; it is stored as an additional column for reference. | session_id | none |
Cookies
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Client ID cookie | First-party cookie created by the d8a web tracker to persist the Client ID (used to derive the GA4-style cid parameter). Default name is _d8a and the value format is C1.1.<random_31bit_int>.<timestamp_seconds>. |
| Session context cookie | First-party cookie created by the d8a web tracker to persist per-property session state. Default name is _d8a_<property_id> and the value is a token list prefixed with S1.1.. It includes the session engagement flag (g, sent as seg to the d8a server). |