creators_name: Krüepl, Bernhard creators_name: Holzinger, Wolfgang creators_name: Darmaputra, Yansen creators_name: Baumgartner, Robert type: conference_item datestamp: 2009-04-06 19:12:07 lastmod: 2009-04-07 14:02:48 metadata_visibility: show title: A Flight Meta-Search Engine with Metamorph ispublished: pub full_text_status: public pres_type: poster abstract: We demonstrate a flight meta-search engine that is based on the Metamorph framework. Metamorph provides mechanisms to model web forms together with the interactions which are needed to fulfil a request, and can generate interaction sequences that pose queries using these web forms and collect the results. In this paper, we discuss an interesting new feature that makes use of the forms themselves as an information source. We show how data can be extracted from web forms (rather than the data behind web forms) to generate a graph of flight connections between cities. The flight connection graph allows us to vastly reduce the number of queries that the engine sends to airline websites in the most interesting search scenarios; those that involve the controversial practice of creative ticketing, in which agencies attempt to find lower price fares by using more than one airline for a journey. We describe a system which attains data from a number of websites to identify promising routes and prune the search tree. Heuristics that make use of geographical information and an estimation of cost based on historical data are employed. The results are then made available to improve the quality of future search requests. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.3.4 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Systems and Software General Terms: Algorithms, Design, Experimentation. Keywords: Hidden Web, Web Data Extraction, Web Form Mapping, Web Form Extraction. date: 2009-04 pagerange: 1069-1069 event_title: 18th International World Wide Web Conference event_location: Madrid, Spain event_dates: April 20th-24th, 2009 event_type: conference refereed: TRUE citation: Krepl, Bernhard and Holzinger, Wolfgang and Darmaputra, Yansen and Baumgartner, Robert (2009) A Flight Meta-Search Engine with Metamorph. In: 18th International World Wide Web Conference, April 20th-24th, 2009, Madrid, Spain. document_url: http://www2009.eprints.org/115/1/p1069.pdf