PECASE: Flexible Construction and Management of Web Sites

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

The World-Wide Web has become a prime vehicle for disseminating information. As a result, the number of large Web sites with complex structure and that serve information derived from multiple data sources is increasing. Building a web site involves the tasks of selecting the data that will be displayed at the site, designing the site's structure, and designing the visual presentation of pages. In existing Web-site management tools, these three tasks are, for the most part, interdependent, and as a result, many maintenance tasks become tedious to perform. The goal of this research project is to develop tools for flexible construction, maintenance and management of web sites. Two specific problems are being studied in detail. The first is the development of policies for efficient run-time management of Web sites. As a part of designing such policies, novel methods for selecting which views over the underlying data can be materialized in order to speed up the performance of the site. In addition, methods are being developed for the automatic restructuring of web sites in response to user browsing patterns. The second problem under consideration is the development of an architecture in which several web-site management tools can interoperate. The goal of such an architecture is to be able to support the larger scope of tasks involved in the lifecycle of a web site, which undoubtedly will require a multitude of tools. This research program is closely coordinated with the development of a database curriculum at the University of Washington, and is carried out in collaboration with industry that is likely to lead to technology transfer with a broad impact. http://data.cs.washington.edu/