topic Why is this so hard -- Simple log parsing in DQL

Why is this so hard -- Simple log parsing

jim_hinze — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 06:30:58 GMT

Sometimes this works, sometimes it does not.... and quite frankly, the documentation is not helpful. Here is a log entry:

Jun 25 15:31:20 HOSTNAME CEF:0|Netwrix|Activity Monitor|9.0.1477|Windows File SystemReadTrueFalse|FileMonitor|3|rt=2026-06-25 15:31:20.431 sntdom=MYDOMAIN suser=MYDOMAIN\asmith src=192.168.241.12 duser=C:\cycfgvol1\DEMProfile10\asmith\Desktop\MyCo Service Portal.lnk shost=MYCONETNAS01 msg=Policy Name= FileMonitor Object Class= Success= True Blocked= False Attribute Name= New Attribute Value= Old Attribute Value= Operation= Read

The part that is bold and underlined is what I want to extract. Below is the DQL query I'm presently attempting to use (I get null values)

fetch logs
| parse content,"'duser= ' ALNUM:fPath 'shost="
| filter ((matchesValue(dt.ingest.source.ip, "192.168.2.88")))

I've also tried:

fetch logs
| parse content,"LD:text 'duser= ' LD{0,255}:thread1 'shost='"
| filter ((matchesValue(dt.ingest.source.ip, "192.168.2.88")))

and the weird part, parsing another string out of the log line, this works...

fetch logs
| parse content, "LD:text '|Windows File' LD{0,100}:PureCommand '|'"
| fields PureCommand, dt.ingest.source.ip, content
| filter ((matchesValue(dt.ingest.source.ip, "10.20.11.88")) )

Ideally, I would like to extract both fields in the same DQL query.

P.S. - if anyone has a "real" source of documentation for parse and DPL I'd be very interested in it... the 2 pages in the official doc's are sorely lacking.

Thank you in advance.

Re: Why is this so hard -- Simple log parsing

jim_hinze — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 21:35:46 GMT

Update...

This works

fetch logs
| parse content, """LD 'duser=' LD:test 'shost='"""

Next question, if I wanted to parse out part of the path returned, how do I escape the '\'

The following doesn't work

fetch logs
| parse content, """LD 'duser=c:\\cycfgvol1\\' LD:test 'shost='"""

Re: Why is this so hard -- Simple log parsing

Julius_Loman — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 21:39:37 GMT

Use DPL architect (click on extract fields).
Probably you want something this (use any line data for duser value, extract into duser field until shost= is found:

| parse content, """LD 'duser=' LD:duser ' shost='"""

Re: Why is this so hard -- Simple log parsing

GerardJ — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 06:14:32 GMT

Maybe you can try with this approach, extracting the fields with DPL, then parse the path with DQL