Richard Chbeir, Youakim Badr, Ajith Abraham, and Aboul-Ella Hassanien Abstract As the Web continues to grow and evolve, more and more data are becoming available. Particularly, multimedia and XML-based data are produced regularly and in increasing way in our daily digital activities, and their retrieval and access must be explored and studied in this emergent web-based era. This book provides reviews of the cutting-edge technologies and insights of various topics related to XML-based and multimedia information access and retrieval under the umbrella of Web Intelligence and reporting how organizations can gain compe- tive advantages by applying new different emergent techniques in the real-world scenarios. The primary target audience for the book includes researchers, scholars, postgraduate students and developers who are interested in advanced information retrieval on the web research and related issues. 1 Introduction Since the last two decades, Internet has changed our daily life by rede?ning the meanings and processes of business, commerce, marketing, ?nance, publishing, R. Chbeir Universite ' de Bourgogne, LE2I-UMR CNRS 5158, Fac. de Sciences Mirande, 21078 Dijon Cedex, France e-mail: richard.
chbeir@u-bourgogne. fr Y. Badr INSA de Lyon, Universite ' de Lyon, Depart ' ement Informatique, 7 avenue Jean Capelle, 69621 Villeurbanne CX, France e-mail: youakim. badr@insa-lyon. fr A. Abraham Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Center for Quanti?able Quality of Service in Communication Systems, O. S. Bragstads plass 2E, 7491 Trondheim, Norway e-mail: ajith. abraham@ieee. org A. -E. Hassanien Kuwait University, College of Business & Administration, Dept.