WEBCAP: Web Scheduler for Distance Learning Multimedia Documents with Web Workload Considerations

In many web applications, such as the distance learning, the frequency of refreshing multimedia web documents places a heavy burden on the WWW resources. Moreover, the updated web documents may encounter inordinate delays, which make it difficult to retrieve web documents in time. Here, we present an Internet tool called WEBCAP that can schedule the retrieval of multimedia web documents in time while considering the workloads on the WWW resources by applying capacity planning techniques. We have modeled a multimedia web document as a 4-level hierarchy (object, operation, timing, and precedence.) The transformations between levels are performed automatically, followed by the application of Bellman-Ford's algorithm on the precedence graph to schedule all operations (fetch, transmit, process, and render) while satisfying the in time retrieval and all workload resources constraints. Our results demonstrate how effective WEBCAP is in scheduling the refreshing of multimedia web documents.