A Publishing System for Efficiently Creating Dynamic Web Content

This paper presents a publishing system for etiiciently creating dynamic Web content. Complex Web pages are constructed from simpler fragments. Fragments may recursively embed other fragments. Relationships betweenWeb pages and fragments are represented by object dependence graphs. We present algorithms for efficiently detecting and updating Web pages affected after one or more fragments change. We also present algorithms for publishing sets of Web pages consistently; different algorithms are used depending upon the consistency requirements. Our publishing system provides an easy method for Web site designers to specify and modify inclusion relationships among Web pages and fragments. Users can npdate content on multiple Web pages by modi@ing a template. The system then automatically updates all Web pages affected by the change. Oar system accommodates both content that mast be proofread before publication and is typically from hnmans as well as content that has to be published immediately and is typically from automated feeds. Our system is being deployed at several popular Web sites including the 2000 Olympic Games Web site. We discuss some of our experiences with real deployments of our system as well as its performance.