Understanding and restructuring Web sites with ReWeb

TLDR

The study investigates how ReWeb can automatically and semiautomatically analyze and restructure web sites to support maintenance and evolution, with plans to enhance robustness, broaden applicability, and add abstraction techniques. ReWeb analyzes web site architecture and evolution using reaching‑frame, dominator, and shortest‑path analyses to guide automatic or semiautomatic restructuring. The case study shows that ReWeb helps developers understand and maintain web sites, with high‑level views and detailed analyses revealing structural and navigation issues that are resolved after restructuring.

Abstract

The authors investigated automatic and semiautomatic Web site analysis with our tool ReWeb, focusing on a site's architecture and evolution. A case study demonstrates how ReWeb addresses the need to support Web site maintenance and evolution while retaining and possibly improving quality. Although not definitive, the case study described confirms that an automatic or semiautomatic tool can help developers understand and maintain Web sites. High-level views, describing the overall site architecture, are very useful, and detailed analyses can help with a site's enclosed subparts. Specifically, we based restructuring on the reaching frames, dominators, and shortest path analyses. In fact, they highlight structural and navigation problems before restructuring and their absence after the intervention. We devote future work to improving the ReWeb's robustness, widening the spectrum of analyzable sites, and enriching its set of analyses and facilities. We would also like to add abstraction techniques to support a high-level view of the site and to partially automate input selection in the presence of dynamic pages.