Design of a graphical user interface for a multimedia DBMS: query management facility

This thesis presents criteria and necessary features by which to evaluate and design a good graphical user interface (GUI) for a Multimedia Database Management System (MDBMS). This material is also applicable to a traditional DBMS. Included in the thesis is the specifications for a Query Management Facility (QMF) for a MDMBS user interface. The nature and benefits of the GUI environment, requires that we consider GUI concepts early in the user interface conceptualization and design. In today's DBMS user interfaces, these GUI concepts are for the most part applied as an after-thought. This is a critical mistake. Early incorporation of GUI capabilities along with established user interface principles results in a superior user interface. The QMF presented herein is one such interface. It combines the ideas of simple operations and data flow to allow the user to specify his query. Additional concepts used include: picture of the database schema, picture of the developing query, selectable objects, direct manipulation, piecemeal query specification, display of immediate results and predefined joins. The resulting QMF is simple to use and enables the flexible expression of the simple as well as the complex database query.http://archive.org/details/designofgraphica00peabCaptain, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited