A data warehouse to support web site automation

Abstract

Background: Due to the constant demand for new information and timely updates of services and content in order to satisfy the user’s needs, web site automation has emerged as a solution to automate several personalization and management activities of a web site. One goal of automation is the reduction of the editor’s effort and consequently of the costs for the owner. The other goal is that the site can more timely adapt to the behavior of the user, improving the browsing experience and helping the user in achieving his/her own goals.

Methods: A database to store rich web data is an essential component for web site automation. In this paper, we propose a data warehouse that is developed to be a repository of information to support different web site automation and monitoring activities. We implemented our data warehouse and used it as a repository of information in three different case studies related to the areas of e-commerce, e-learning, and e-news.

Result: The case studies showed that our data warehouse is appropriate for web site automation in different contexts.

Conclusion: In all cases, the use of the data warehouse was quite simple and with a good response time, mainly because of the simplicity of its structure.