WebCiao: A Website Visualization and Tracking System.
Yih-Farn Robin Chen, Eleftherios Koutsofios · 1997
WebCiao is a system for visualizing and tracking the structures of websites by creating, differencing, and analyzing archived website databases. The architecture of WebCiao allows users to create customized website analysis tools by combining a set of query and analysis operators on a virtual database pipeline. Each virtual database sent on the pipe can be converted to directed graphs, database views, or HTML reports. Within a graph view, operators can be fired from any graph node to study a selected neighborhood. WebCiao helps creators of large websites to monitor the dynamics of structural changes closely. It also helps web surfers to quickly identify new products and services from a website. An on-line demo, Website News, based on the WebCiao technology, has helped sharpen our focus with its daily analysis of new web contents from the internet and telecommunications industries. 1. Introduction The complexity and ever-changing nature of major websites are presenting problems to both...