The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Structured document comparison and scientific data mining on the world wide web
Author:	Johnson, Philip B.
View Online:	njit-etd1997-060 (viii, 67 pages ~ 3.7 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Computer and Information Science
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Computer Science
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Wang, Jason T. L. (Committee chair) McHugh, James A. (Committee member) Ng, Peter A. (Committee member)
Date:	1997-10
Keywords:	Word Wide Web (Information retrieval system)--Computer programs.
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	The usefulness and accessibility of programs and systems have become important issues for users and researchers alike. A program's usefulness can lw measured by the frequency with which it is used. From the author's or maintainer's point of view, the frequency of usage can be determined by how often a request for the software is received. In the past, a user became aware of a particular tool through various means, and contacted the author or maintainer to obtain a copy of it. This presented difficulties, ranging from language barriers to machine incompatibilities to control of the use of the program. Furthermore, accessibility of the program was limited to the particular machines on which it was installed (at the remote site). By porting programs and systems to the World Wide Web, the problems of accessibility and usefulness can be mitigated. Now programs can be advertised (in a non-commercial sense) to all interested parties, problems of machine incompatibility can be reduced (with the exception of browser incompatibilities), and control of the use and modification can be maintained. This thesis discusses the porting of two tools to the World Wide Web. The tools are SDISCOVER, a data mining tool used in protein string matching, and TREEDIFF, a structured document comparison toolkit. Spinoff of this research is the development of two home pages for conference registrations and Oracle user account applications in a university environment.