Patent ID: 6851089

Claim:
A method of generating a wrapper for extracting information from a repository of semistructured information, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of: presenting to a user a set of predefined operation types from which to construct the wrapper, the predefined set comprising operation types for extracting data from the repository based on structural relationships within the semistructured information, including operation types for retrieving web documents, following links within retrieved web documents, using match expressions to locate data items within the retrieved web documents, and extracting desired data items from the retrieved web documents for storage in a structured format; presenting to the user an option to select operation types from the set and to specify properties of selected operation types, to allow the user to define operations to be performed by the wrapper; monitoring and recording selections by the user of operation types and entry of operation properties, to generate the wrapper, wherein the wrapper is adapted to be executed to extract data from one or more web documents; and generating and displaying on a display screen a graphical representation of the wrapper in which wrapper operations are depicted as objects on the display screen.