A metaphorical and visual language for querying an existing relational database

Abstract

Metaphors have been proved useful in facilitating learning and using an operating system or various other tools. The purpose of this paper is to show through the VISTA language, the benefits of using metaphors for the reverse engineering of relational databases. VISTA is a visual query language associated with an objectoriented semantic data model. VISTA uses metaphors to represent the data model concepts and the language operators. It provides a meaningful query environment for end users. The user is set in a room and querying consists of direct and natural manipulations on objects of this room. We show how VISTA proposes a unified solution to problems such as set comparison and combination, explicit joins, quantification, graphic congestion while seeking at the same time easy query formulation. We also report our experience with an industrial example. KeywordsVisual query language, end user, metaphor, semantic visualization, object-oriented semantic data model, database reverse engineering, industrial application.