Web Data Extraction, Applications and Techniques: A Survey

Web Data Extraction is an important problem that has been studied by means of different scientific tools and in a broad range of applications. Many approaches to extracting data from the Web have been designed to solve specific problems and operate in ad-hoc domains. Other approaches, instead, heavily reuse techniques and algorithms developed in the field of Information Extraction. This survey aims at providing a structured and comprehensive overview of the literature in the field of Web Data Extraction. We provided a simple classification framework in which existing Web Data Extraction applications are grouped into two main classes, namely applications at the Enterprise level and at the Social Web level. At the Enterprise level, Web Data Extraction techniques emerge as a key tool to perform data analysis in Business and Competitive Intelligence systems as well as for business process re-engineering. At the Social Web level, Web Data Extraction techniques allow to gather a large amount of structured data continuously generated and disseminated by Web 2.0, Social Media and Online Social Network users and this offers unprecedented opportunities to analyze human behavior at a very large scale. We discuss also the potential of cross-fertilization, i.e., on the possibility of re-using Web Data Extraction techniques originally designed to work in a given domain, in other domains.Comment: Knowledge-based System

A comparative study of the AHP and TOPSIS methods for implementing load shedding scheme in a pulp mill system

The advancement of technology had encouraged mankind to design and create useful equipment and devices. These equipment enable users to fully utilize them in various applications. Pulp mill is one of the heavy industries that consumes large amount of electricity in its production. Due to this, any malfunction of the equipment might cause mass losses to the company. In particular, the breakdown of the generator would cause other generators to be overloaded. In the meantime, the subsequence loads will be shed until the generators are sufficient to provide the power to other loads. Once the fault had been fixed, the load shedding scheme can be deactivated. Thus, load shedding scheme is the best way in handling such condition. Selected load will be shed under this scheme in order to protect the generators from being damaged. Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) can be applied in determination of the load shedding scheme in the electric power system. In this thesis two methods which are Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) were introduced and applied. From this thesis, a series of analyses are conducted and the results are determined. Among these two methods which are AHP and TOPSIS, the results shown that TOPSIS is the best Multi criteria Decision Making (MCDM) for load shedding scheme in the pulp mill system. TOPSIS is the most effective solution because of the highest percentage effectiveness of load shedding between these two methods. The results of the AHP and TOPSIS analysis to the pulp mill system are very promising

Implicit Measures of Lostness and Success in Web Navigation

In two studies, we investigated the ability of a variety of structural and temporal measures computed from a web navigation path to predict lostness and task success. The user’s task was to find requested target information on specified websites. The web navigation measures were based on counts of visits to web pages and other statistical properties of the web usage graph (such as compactness, stratum, and similarity to the optimal path). Subjective lostness was best predicted by similarity to the optimal path and time on task. The best overall predictor of success on individual tasks was similarity to the optimal path, but other predictors were sometimes superior depending on the particular web navigation task. These measures can be used to diagnose user navigational problems and to help identify problems in website design

Behaviour modelling with data obtained from the Internet and contributions to cluster validation

[EN]This PhD thesis makes contributions in modelling behaviours found in different types of data acquired from the Internet and in the field of clustering evaluation. Two different types of Internet data were processed, on the one hand, internet traffic with the objective of attack detection and on the other hand, web surfing activity with the objective of web personalization, both data being of sequential nature. To this aim, machine learning techniques were applied, mostly unsupervised techniques. Moreover, contributions were made in cluster evaluation, in order to make easier the selection of the best partition in clustering problems. With regard to network attack detection, first, gureKDDCup database was generated which adds payload data to KDDCup99 connection attributes because it is essential to detect non-flood attacks. Then, by modelling this data a network Intrusion Detection System (nIDS) was proposed where context-independent payload processing was done obtaining satisfying detection rates. In the web mining context web surfing activity was modelled for web personalization. In this context, generic and non-invasive systems to extract knowledge were proposed just using the information stored in webserver log files. Contributions were done in two senses: in problem detection and in link suggestion. In the first application a meaningful list of navigation attributes was proposed for each user session to group and detect different navigation profiles. In the latter, a general and non-invasive link suggestion system was proposed which was evaluated with satisfactory results in a link prediction context. With regard to the analysis of Cluster Validity Indices (CVI), the most extensive CVI comparison found up to a moment was carried out using a partition similarity measure based evaluation methodology. Moreover, we analysed the behaviour of CVIs in a real web mining application with elevated number of clusters in which they tend to be unstable. We proposed a procedure which automatically selects the best partition analysing the slope of different CVI values.[EU]Doktorego-tesi honek internetetik eskuratutako datu mota ezberdinetan aurkitutako portaeren modelugintzan eta multzokatzeen ebaluazioan egiten ditu bere ekarpenak. Zehazki, bi mota ezberdinetako interneteko datuak prozesatu dira: batetik, interneteko trafikoa, erasoak hautemateko helburuarekin; eta bestetik, web nabigazioen jarduera, weba pertsonalizatzeko helburuarekin; bi datu motak izaera sekuentzialekoak direlarik. Helburu hauek lortzeko, ikasketa automatikoko teknikak aplikatu dira, nagusiki gainbegiratu-gabeko teknikak. Testuinguru honetan, multzokatzeen partizio onenaren aukeraketak dakartzan arazoak gutxitzeko multzokatzeen ebaluazioan ere ekarpenak egin dira. Sareko erasoen hautemateari dagokionez, lehenik gureKDDCup datubasea eratu da KDDCup99-ko konexio atributuei payload-ak (sareko paketeen datu eremuak) gehituz, izan ere, ez-flood erasoak (pakete gutxi erabiltzen dituzten erasoak) hautemateko ezinbestekoak baitira. Ondoren, datu hauek modelatuz testuinguruarekiko independenteak diren payload prozesaketak oinarri dituen sareko erasoak hautemateko sistema (network Intrusion Detection System (nIDS)) bat proposatu da maila oneko eraso hautemate-tasak lortuz. Web meatzaritzaren testuinguruan, weba pertsonalizatzeko helburuarekin web nabigazioen jarduera modelatu da. Honetarako, web zerbizarietako lorratz fitxategietan metatutako informazioa soilik erabiliz ezagutza erabilgarria erauziko duen sistema orokor eta ez-inbasiboak proposatu dira. Ekarpenak bi zentzutan eginaz: arazoen hautematean eta esteken iradokitzean. Lehen aplikazioan sesioen nabigazioa adierazteko atributu esanguratsuen zerrenda bat proposatu da, gero nabigazioak multzokatu eta nabigazio profil ezberdinak hautemateko. Bigarren aplikazioan, estekak iradokitzeko sistema orokor eta ez-inbasibo bat proposatu da, eta berau, estekak aurresateko testuinguruan ebaluatu da emaitza onak lortuz. Multzokatzeak balioztatzeko indizeen (Cluster Validity Indices (CVI)) azterketari dagokionez, gaurdaino aurkitu den CVI-en konparaketa zabalena burutu da partizioen antzekotasun neurrian oinarritutako ebaluazio metodologia erabiliz. Gainera, CVI-en portaera aztertu da egiazko web meatzaritza aplikazio batean normalean baino multzo kopuru handiagoak dituena, non CVI-ek ezegonkorrak izateko joera baitute. Arazo honi aurre eginaz, CVI ezberdinek partizio ezberdinetarako lortzen dituzten balioen maldak aztertuz automatikoki partiziorik onena hautatzen duen prozedura proposatu da.[ES]Esta tesis doctoral hace contribuciones en el modelado de comportamientos encontrados en diferentes tipos de datos adquiridos desde internet y en el campo de la evaluación del clustering. Dos tipos de datos de internet han sido procesados: en primer lugar el tráfico de internet con el objetivo de detectar ataques; y en segundo lugar la actividad generada por los usuarios web con el objetivo de personalizar la web; siendo los dos tipos de datos de naturaleza secuencial. Para este fin, se han aplicado técnicas de aprendizaje automático, principalmente técnicas no-supervisadas. Además, se han hecho aportaciones en la evaluación de particiones de clusters para facilitar la selección de la mejor partición de clusters. Respecto a la detección de ataques en la red, primero, se generó la base de datos gureKDDCup que añade el payload (la parte de contenido de los paquetes de la red) a los atributos de la conexión de KDDCup99 porque el payload es esencial para la detección de ataques no-flood (ataques que utilizan pocos paquetes). Después, se propuso un sistema de detección de intrusos (network Intrusion Detection System (IDS)) modelando los datos de gureKDDCup donde se propusieron varios preprocesos del payload independientes del contexto obteniendo resultados satisfactorios. En el contexto de la minerı́a web, se ha modelado la actividad de la navegación web para la personalización web. En este contexto se propondrán sistemas genéricos y no-invasivos para la extracción del conocimiento, utilizando únicamente la información almacenada en los ficheros log de los servidores web. Se han hecho aportaciones en dos sentidos: en la detección de problemas y en la sugerencia de links. En la primera aplicación, se propuso una lista de atributos significativos para representar las sesiones de navegación web para después agruparlos y detectar diferentes perfiles de navegación. En la segunda aplicación, se propuso un sistema general y no-invasivo para sugerir links y se evaluó en el contexto de predicción de links con resultados satisfactorios. Respecto al análisis de ı́ndices de validación de clusters (Cluster Validity Indices (CVI)), se ha realizado la más amplia comparación encontrada hasta el momento que utiliza la metodologı́a de evaluación basada en medidas de similitud de particiones. Además, se ha analizado el comportamiento de los CVIs en una aplicación real de minerı́a web con un número elevado de clusters, contexto en el que los CVIs tienden a ser inestables, ası́ que se propuso un procedimiento para la selección automática de la mejor partición en base a la pendiente de los valores de diferentes CVIs.Grant of the Basque Government (ref.: BFI08.226); Grant of Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government (ref.: BES-2011-045989); Research stay grant of Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ref.: EEBB-I-14-08862); University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (BAILab, grant UFI11/45); Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Basque Government (grant IT-395-10); Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government and by the European Regional Development Fund - ERDF (eGovernAbility, grant TIN2014-52665-C2-1-R)

The role of human factors in stereotyping behavior and perception of digital library users: A robust clustering approach

To deliver effective personalization for digital library users, it is necessary to identify which human factors are most relevant in determining the behavior and perception of these users. This paper examines three key human factors: cognitive styles, levels of expertise and gender differences, and utilizes three individual clustering techniques: k-means, hierarchical clustering and fuzzy clustering to understand user behavior and perception. Moreover, robust clustering, capable of correcting the bias of individual clustering techniques, is used to obtain a deeper understanding. The robust clustering approach produced results that highlighted the relevance of cognitive style for user behavior, i.e., cognitive style dominates and justifies each of the robust clusters created. We also found that perception was mainly determined by the level of expertise of a user. We conclude that robust clustering is an effective technique to analyze user behavior and perception

Integration and mining of malaria molecular, functional and pharmacological data: how far are we from a chemogenomic knowledge space?

The organization and mining of malaria genomic and post-genomic data is highly motivated by the necessity to predict and characterize new biological targets and new drugs. Biological targets are sought in a biological space designed from the genomic data from Plasmodium falciparum, but using also the millions of genomic data from other species. Drug candidates are sought in a chemical space containing the millions of small molecules stored in public and private chemolibraries. Data management should therefore be as reliable and versatile as possible. In this context, we examined five aspects of the organization and mining of malaria genomic and post-genomic data: 1) the comparison of protein sequences including compositionally atypical malaria sequences, 2) the high throughput reconstruction of molecular phylogenies, 3) the representation of biological processes particularly metabolic pathways, 4) the versatile methods to integrate genomic data, biological representations and functional profiling obtained from X-omic experiments after drug treatments and 5) the determination and prediction of protein structures and their molecular docking with drug candidate structures. Progresses toward a grid-enabled chemogenomic knowledge space are discussed.Comment: 43 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Malaria Journa

Closed sequential pattern mining for sitemap generation

AbstractA sitemap represents an explicit specification of the design concept and knowledge organization of a website and is therefore considered as the website's basic ontology. It not only presents the main usage flows for users, but also hierarchically organizes concepts of the website. Typically, sitemaps are defined by webmasters in the very early stages of the website design. However, during their life websites significantly change their structure, their content and their possible navigation paths. Even if this is not the case, webmasters can fail to either define sitemaps that reflect the actual website content or, vice versa, to define the actual organization of pages and links which do not reflect the intended organization of the content coded in the sitemaps. In this paper we propose an approach which automatically generates sitemaps. Contrary to other approaches proposed in the literature, which mainly generate sitemaps from the textual content of the pages, in this work sitemaps are generated by analyzing the Web graph of a website. This allows us to: i) automatically generate a sitemap on the basis of possible navigation paths, ii) compare the generated sitemaps with either the sitemap provided by the Web designer or with the intended sitemap of the website and, consequently, iii) plan possible website re-organization. The solution we propose is based on closed frequent sequence extraction and only concentrates on hyperlinks organized in "Web lists", which are logical lists embedded in the pages. These "Web lists" are typically used for supporting users in Web site navigation and they include menus, navbars and content tables. Experiments performed on three real datasets show that the extracted sitemaps are much more similar to those defined by website curators than those obtained by competitor algorithms

Closed sequential pattern mining for sitemap generation

A sitemap represents an explicit specification of the design concept and knowledge organization of a website and is therefore considered as the website’s basic ontology. It not only presents the main usage flows for users, but also hierarchically organizes concepts of the website. Typically, sitemaps are defined by webmasters in the very early stages of the website design. However, during their life websites significantly change their structure, their content and their possible navigation paths. Even if this is not the case, webmasters can fail to either define sitemaps that reflect the actual website content or, vice versa, to define the actual organization of pages and links which do not reflect the intended organization of the content coded in the sitemaps. In this paper we propose an approach which automatically generates sitemaps. Contrary to other approaches proposed in the literature, which mainly generate sitemaps from the textual content of the pages, in this work sitemaps are generated by analyzing the Web graph of a website. This allows us to: i) automatically generate a sitemap on the basis of possible navigation paths, ii) compare the generated sitemaps with either the sitemap provided by the Web designer or with the intended sitemap of the website and, consequently, iii) plan possible website re-organization. The solution we propose is based on closed frequent sequence extraction and only concentrates on hyperlinks organized in “Web lists”, which are logical lists embedded in the pages. These “Web lists” are typically used for supporting users in Web site navigation and they include menus, navbars and content tables. Experiments performed on three real datasets show that the extracted sitemaps are much more similar to those defined by website curators than those obtained by competitor algorithms

Web Usage Mining and User Behaviour Prediction

Today, Internet is playing such a significant role in our day-to-day life. We have witnessed the evermore- interesting and upcoming publishing medium is the World Wide Web (WWW). The rapid growth in the volume of information available over the WWW and number of its� potential users� has leads to difficulties in providing effective search service for users�, resulting in decrease in the web performance. Web Usage Mining is an area, where the navigational access behaviour of users� over the web is tracked and analyzed. So that websites owner can easily identify the access patterns of its users�. By collecting and analyzing this behaviour of user activities, websites owner can enhance the quality and performance of services to catch the attention of existing as well as new customers. This research paper intends to provide an overview of past and current evaluation in users� future request prediction using Web Usage Mining

Towards Comparative Web Content Mining using Object Oriented Model

Web content data are heterogeneous in nature; usually composed of different types of contents and data structure. Thus, extraction and mining of web content data is a challenging branch of data mining. Traditional web content extraction and mining techniques are classified into three categories: programming language based wrappers, wrapper (data extraction program) induction techniques, and automatic wrapper generation techniques. First category constructs data extraction system by providing some specialized pattern specification languages, second category is a supervised learning, which learns data extraction rules and third category is automatic extraction process. All these data extraction techniques rely on web document presentation structures, which need complicated matching and tree alignment algorithms, routine maintenance, hard to unify for vast variety of websites and fail to catch heterogeneous data together. To catch more diversity of web documents, a feasible implementation of an automatic data extraction technique based on object oriented data model technique, 00Web, had been proposed in Annoni and Ezeife (2009). This thesis implements, materializes and extends the structured automatic data extraction technique. We developed a system (called WebOMiner) for extraction and mining of structured web contents based on object-oriented data model. Thesis extends the extraction algorithms proposed by Annoni and Ezeife (2009) and develops an automata based automatic wrapper generation algorithm for extraction and mining of structured web content data. Our algorithm identifies data blocks from flat array data structure and generates Non-Deterministic Finite Automata (NFA) pattern for different types of content data for extraction. Objective of this thesis is to extract and mine heterogeneous web content and relieve the hard effort of matching, tree alignment and routine maintenance. Experimental results show that our system is highly effective and it performs the mining task with 100% precision and 96.22% recall value