SPLK-1002 Advanced Searching and Statistics Practice Question
A large e-commerce platform uses Splunk to monitor user sessions. Each session is composed of multiple events with a common 'session_id' field. The current search to compute average session duration is: 'index=web | transaction session_id maxspan=30m | eval duration=_time_last - _time | stats avg(duration)'. This search runs for over an hour on a 6-hour time window. The environment has 20 indexers and data volume is 2 TB/day. The admin suspects that the transaction command is the bottleneck. Which optimization should be applied?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Replace transaction with 'stats earliest(_time) as start latest(_time) as end by session_id | eval duration=end-start | stats avg(duration)'.
The correct optimization is Option C: replacing the transaction command with 'stats earliest(_time) as start latest(_time) as end by session_id | eval duration=end-start | stats avg(duration)'. The transaction command is inefficient because it groups all session events in memory and calculates duration, which consumes significant resources on 20 indexers with 2 TB/day. The stats approach is streaming and reduces data to one row per session before the eval and avg, drastically lowering memory and CPU usage. Option A (reducing time range to 1 hour) might help but doesn't address the core inefficiency and could miss sessions spanning longer than an hour. Option B (adding eventstats before transaction) adds extra processing without removing the bottleneck, still using transaction. Option D (removing maxspan) would allow sessions to remain open indefinitely, increasing memory consumption and potentially causing timeouts. Therefore, Option C is the most effective optimization.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Reduce the time range to 1 hour.
Why it's wrong here
Does not solve the underlying inefficiency of transaction.
- ✗
Add 'eventstats earliest(_time) as start latest(_time) as end by session_id' before transaction.
Why it's wrong here
This still requires transaction to group events; eventstats alone does not group.
- ✓
Replace transaction with 'stats earliest(_time) as start latest(_time) as end by session_id | eval duration=end-start | stats avg(duration)'.
Why this is correct
Much more efficient because stats uses less memory than transaction.
- ✗
Remove the maxspan parameter from the transaction command to allow longer sessions.
Why it's wrong here
This will likely increase resource usage as sessions can span longer.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SPLK-1002 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Splunk certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SPLK-1002 exam.