Helen Ashman
Abstract
The management of electronic document collections is fundamentally different from the management of paper documents. The ephemeral nature of some electronic documents means that the document address (i.e., reference details of the document) can become incorrect some time after coming into use, resulting in references, such as index entries and hypertext links, failing to correctly address the document they describe. A classic case of invalidated references is on the World Wide Web—links that point to a named resource fail when the domain name, file name, or any other aspect of the addressed resource is changed, resulting in the well-known Error 404. Additionally, there are other errors which arise from changes to document collections.
This paper surveys the strategies used both in World Wide Web software and other hypertext systems for managing the integrity of references and hence the integrity of links. Some strategies are preventative, not permitting errors to occur; others are corrective, discovering references errors and sometimes attempting to correct them; while the last strategy is adaptive, because references are calculated on a just-in-time basis, according the current state of the document collection.
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Index Terms
- Electronic document addressing: dealing with change
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Reviews
Claudiu Popescu
This article analyzes the problem of the integrity of electronic documents, in particular, of Web sites. The main problem is that hyperlinks are frequently changed, producing the well-known Error 404. Based on the stunning fact that the average life of a WWW document is only 50 days, the article shows that solutions must be found. Link integrity is identified as the main problem. Eleven solutions for link integrity are then discussed. Each solution has its scope and degree of customer satisfaction. Each solution is presented either by examples of systems which implements it or references to papers were it is discussed in depth. The author has tested each solution, mentioning the advantages and drawbacks. I consider very interesting the topic of this paper, about a very critical aspect of today's computer usage. The paper gives a broad and interesting description of problems and solutions. It has also many good references.
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