The IIB XSLT Generator for Interface Mapping is an application to generate XSLT-Transformation-Files for the Internet Information Broker (IIB). The webcrawler IIB, that was developped at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur, crawls websites and gives back structured information. IIB needs the description of the website as a XSLT-Program. These XSLT-Transformation-Files contain the complete structure for the crawling-process and define what information is to be collected.

Until now, the XSLT-Transformation-File had to be written by hand. As the IIB reacts sensible on changes of the structures of the crawling-websites, a lot of work was necessary even when little layout-changes were done. The IIB XSLT Generator helps defining a mapping between a website and the output-structure, so that a change of layout is corrected in no time, as well as new sites can be crawled.

IIB is used by comparis.ch to search data for its carfinder-service. With the new possibilities of the IIB XSLT Generator, the legal effects are intensified.

Webcrawlers like the IIB are very popular among internet-users, but from a legal point of view the situation is uncertain. Throughout the world there are legal actions taken against them, even in Switzerland. The legal situation of webcrawlers were to be analysed thoroughly as a second focus. Copyright and competition law were covered deeply, whereas in Switzerland there exists no guideline for databases as there does in the EU. Therefore, in all the presented cases, no charges could be verified. Under certain circumstances webcrawlers are legal, even if crawling foreign websites and using their data.