Web Archiving From the Ground Up

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August 05, 2002 (Computerworld) -- Customers of Corporate Express Inc. who want to review their billing histories can do so by logging into the office products vendor's Web site. The experience of developing a content management system that could deliver those documents on the Web has helped the company refine its archiving strategy for other parts of its Web site as well, says Wayne Aiello, vice president of e-business services at Broomfield, Colo.-based Corporate Express.
"Archiving is very important because it allows us to keep a history of what we have done on this site, both text and graphical," he explains.
The company's Web site archive, developed using Documentum 4i eContent Server software, captures the look and feel of archived Web pages, although it's not the same as surfing the original Web site, Aiello says. The archive "is not a dynamically linked Web site. You have to step yourself through that," he says. And since hot links don't work, Aiello embeds notes on archived Web pages that appear, "kind of like sticky notes, where a link to another page is not obvious."
The system captures only static content, however. The dynamic, database-driven pages used for the e-commerce parts of the Web site are impossible to capture in a Web page context, Aiello says.
Also, the number of licensed Documentum users is limited, so other employees who want to view historical Web pages typically must make requests. "We publish more frequently requested information to the intranet," he says.
Aiello says that the Web site content and the metatags Documentum uses to describe Web page information can be exported if Corporate Express ever needs to move off of the 4i eContent Server. He says he would like to see that information stored in XML - the format Corporate Express used to store its billing data. "XML is a standard that attempts to transcend any vendor's proprietary format," Aiello says.
Still, he's not worried about future migration issues. "It's not like the data's locked up and we don't have the key," he says.

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