The existence of different autonomous Web sites containing related information has given rise to the problem of integrating these sources effectively to provide a comprehensive integrated source of relevant information. The advent of e-commerce and the increasing trend of availability of commercial data on the Web has generated the need to analyze and manipulate these data to support corporate decision making. Decision support systems now must be able to harness and analyze Web data to provide organizations with a competitive edge. In a recent report on the future of database research known as the Asilomar Report, it has been predicted that in a few years from now, the.
