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A Graphical Interface to a
Complex-Object Database Management System
Harald Schöning
University of Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern, Federal Republic of Germany
Abstract
The research in database systems for new application areas has created several new architectural designs for database systems, among them the database kernel architecture. We present a graphical interface which is located on top of such a database kernel system. It provides an interface to the molecule-atom data model, which is a complex-object data model that serves as the basis for the implementation of various applications from new areas such as VLSI design. Our interface is able to display the database schema graphically and allows the graphical formulation of queries. Furthermore, it displays the results of queries as sets of complex objects. Each of these objects corresponds to a directed graph. The level of detail in the presentation of the results may be changed interactively. Initially, for each element of the set one representative is shown. The graph (i.e. the complex-object structure) corresponding to one or several elements of the result can be visualised. For each node in a graph, its content (i.e., the attribute values) can be displayed. Furthermore, a type-oriented view to the components of the result set's complex objects is provided.
in: Proc. Int. Workshop on Interfaces to Database Systems, Glasgow, Scotland, 1992
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