![](bg6.png)
tried to understand the real difference between each
pair of cloned pages and we have observed that this
difference only consisted on their SQL code.
Moreover, the references to the database tables often
were the only difference in the SQL queries. It is
worth noting that the file names of these pages are
also very similar, meaning that there are groups of
different pages that actually implement the same or
very similar functionality for the different events
(main conference and workshops). Indeed, these
files might be clustered into groups of clones in a
similar way to the approach by Di Lucca et al.
(2002). In general, clustering is possible if the
similarity threshold required is very high, otherwise
our experience has demonstrated that clustering does
not produce meaningful results.
5 CONCLUSION
In this paper an approach to clone analysis for Web
applications has been proposed together with a
prototype implementation for JSP web pages. Our
approach analyzes the page structure, implemented
by specific sequences of HTML tags, and the
content displayed for both dynamic and static pages.
Moreover, for a pair of JSP pages we also consider
the similarity degree of their java source. The
similarity degree can be adapted and tuned in a
simple way for different web applications.
We have reported the results of applying our
approach and tool in a case study. The results have
confirmed that the lack of analysis and design of the
Web application has effect on the duplication of the
pages. In particular, these results allowed us to
identify some common features for the SEKE
conference and the collocated workshops that could
be integrated, by deleting the duplications.
Moreover, the clone analysis of the JSP pages
enabled to acquire information to improve the
general quality and conceptual/design of the
database of the web application. Indeed, we plan to
exploit the results of the clone analysis method to
support web application reengineering activities
(Antoniol et al., 2000).
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