The Elza Project

The Elza project is no longer maintained. The code quality was so low (I wrote it in 1999 or so, too young to know how to write proper code) that it is now a pain for me to even think about it.

As a side note, I was also contacted by attorneys representing S.P.I. Dynamics, Inc. that were probably seeking to patent the concept behind Elza. While this does demonstrate that the web spidering concepts in Elza were sound, I hope their patent is not enforcable in the European Union.

Currently, several Open Source Perl alternatives are available, namely WWW::Mechanize. Unfortunately, it is based on LWP, which is known to be extremely slow. So, if you are looking for a thing for your spidering hobby, go for it. On the other hand, if you are interested in commercial-grade solution for your data retrieval needs, please see my services page.