Automatic Wrapper Adaptation by Tree Edit Distance Matching

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for automatically adapting web data extraction wrappers by measuring tree similarity with improved tree edit distance techniques, enhancing robustness against webpage structure changes.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new approach for automatic wrapper adaptation using advanced tree edit distance matching, improving robustness to webpage structural changes.

Findings

Effective adaptation to webpage structure changes

Improved accuracy in wrapper matching

Enhanced robustness of data extraction

Abstract

Information distributed through the Web keeps growing faster day by day, and for this reason, several techniques for extracting Web data have been suggested during last years. Often, extraction tasks are performed through so called wrappers, procedures extracting information from Web pages, e.g. implementing logic-based techniques. Many fields of application today require a strong degree of robustness of wrappers, in order not to compromise assets of information or reliability of data extracted. Unfortunately, wrappers may fail in the task of extracting data from a Web page, if its structure changes, sometimes even slightly, thus requiring the exploiting of new techniques to be automatically held so as to adapt the wrapper to the new structure of the page, in case of failure. In this work we present a novel approach of automatic wrapper adaptation based on the measurement of similarity of trees through improved tree edit distance matching techniques.