Webbases are database systems that enable creation of Web applications that allow end users to shop around for products and services at various Web sites without having to manually browse and fill out forms at each of these sites. In this paper we describe XRover which is an implementation of the physical layer of the webbase architecture. This layer is primarily responsible for automatically locating and extracting dynamic data from Web sites, i.e data that can only be obtained by form fill-outs. We discuss our experience in building XRover using FLORA, a deductive object-oriented system.
Hasan Davulcu, Guizhen Yang, Michael Kifer, I. V.