VISCO: bringing visual spatial querying to reality

Author

Wessel, Michael ; Haarslev, Volker

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Hamburg Univ., Germany

fYear

1998

fDate

1-4 Sep 1998

Firstpage

170

Lastpage

177

Abstract

The paper reports on the evolution of the spatial (sketch based) query language VISCO and its implementation. The first design of VISCO´s query language was presented at VL ´97. The language is based on a strong naive physics metaphor for query objects (e.g. marbles, nails, rubber bands). We review the prominent aspects of the revised version of VISCO´s query language. The main focus of the paper is on VISCO´s implementation using city maps of Hamburg as example domain. Its innovative user interface consists of three interconnected components: a graphical (syntax directed) query editor and visual language compiler, a browser for inspecting the query results, and a map viewer for browsing the spatial database. We also briefly report on the process of compiling, optimizing, and executing VISCO´s queries

Keywords

graphical user interfaces; program compilers; query languages; visual databases; visual languages; visual programming; Hamburg; VISCO; browser; city maps; graphical query editor; innovative user interface; interconnected components; map viewer; naive physics metaphor; query language; query objects; query processing; sketch based query language; spatial database; visual language compiler; visual spatial querying; Cities and towns; Database languages; Electrical capacitance tomography; Geographic Information Systems; Human computer interaction; Optimizing compilers; Prototypes; Spatial databases; User interfaces; Visual databases;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Visual Languages, 1998. Proceedings. 1998 IEEE Symposium on

Conference_Location

Halifax, NS

ISSN

1049-2615

Print_ISBN

0-8186-8712-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/VL.1998.706160

Filename

706160