Modeling and Analysis the Web Structure Using Stochastic Timed Petri Nets

Abstract

Precise analysis of the Web structure can facilitate data pre-processing and enhance the accuracy of the mining results in the procedure of Web usage mining. STPN (Stochastic Timed Petri Nets) is a high-level graphical model widely used in modeling system activities with concurrency. STPN can save the analyzed results in an incidence matrix for future follow-up analyses, and some already-verified properties held by STPN, such as reachability, can also be used to solve some unsettled problems in the model. In the present study, we put forth the use of STPN as the Web structure model. We adopt Place in the STPN model to represent webpage on the websites and use Transition to represent hyperlink. Through the model, we can conduct Web structure analysis. We simultaneously employ the Web structure analysis information in the incidence matrix and the reachability properties, obtained from the STPN model, to help proceed with pageview identification and path completion at the data preprocessing phase.