MetaSeeker Installation Guide v3.x

MetaSeeker Toolkit Online V3.x is made up of two client-side tools, i.e. MetaStudio and DataScraper, which are required to be downloaded and installed locally. In this release, users are not bothered to install and maintain the MetaCamp and DataStore servers since there are two publicly available on the Web. The following are summaries on the two client-side tools.

  • MetaStudio Online V3.x structures the target Web pages and generate specific Web data extraction instructions which are to be consumed by DataScraper to extract required data. So MetaStudio can be viewed as a factory of Web data extractors. MetaStudio is released as a Firefox extension and provides a friendly GUI. The tool is packaged specifically for different operation systems and different versions of Firefoxs.
  • DataScraper Online V3.x, driven by the instructions generated by MetaStudio, extracts data from the Web in bulk. DataScraper is also released as a Firefox extension and provides a GUI. There is only one single package for different operating systems and versions of Firefox.

While DataStore and MetaCamp application servers are only packaged into MetaSeeker Toolkit Enterprise, users of MetaSeeker Online can enjoy most of the features of the servers shared on the Internet.