Designing and integrating user interfaces of geographic database applications

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we investigate the problem of designing graphical geographic database user interfaces (GDUIs) and of integrating them into a database management system (DBMS). Geographic applications may vary widely but they all have common aspects due to the spatial component of their data: Geographic data are not standard and they require appropriate tools for (i) editing them (i.e., display and modify) and (ii) querying them. The conceptual problems encountered in designing GDUIs are partly due to the merger of two independent fields, geographic DBMSs on the one hand, and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on the other hand. Although these areas have evolved considerably during the past ten years, only little effort has been made to understand the problems of connecting them in order to efficiently manipulate geographic data on a display. This issue raises the general problem of coupling a DBMS with specialized modules (in particular, the problem of strong vs. weak integration), and more generally the role of a DBMS in a specific application. After giving the functionalities that a GDUI should provide, we study the possible conceptual integrations between a GUI and a DBMS. Finally, a map editing model as well as a general and modular GDUI architecture are presented.

REFERENCES

• 1: Bernd Amann , Vassilis Christophides , Michel Scholl, HyperPATH/O2: Integrating Hypermedia Systems with Object-Oriented Database Systems, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, p.709-720, September 06-08, 1993
• 2: François Bancilhon , Claude Delobel , Paris Kanellakis, Building an object-oriented database system: the story of 02, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1992
• 3: BULL, FRANCE. GoPATH 1.2.0, Documentation Volume of the Public Release, 1993.
• 4: Benoit David , Laurent Raynal , Guylaine Schorter , Véronique Mansart, GeO2: Why Objects in a Geographical DBMS?, Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Advances in Spatial Databases, p.264-276, June 23-25, 1993
• 5: O. Deux et al., The Story of O2, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, v.2 n.1, p.91-108, March 1990 [doi>10.1109/69.50908]
• 6: EGENHOFER, M. Spatial Query Languages. PhD t,hesis, IJniversit,y of Maine, 1991.
• 7: Max J. Egenhofer , Andrew U. Frank, Towards a Spatial Query Language: User Interface Considerations, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.124-133, August 29-September 01, 1988
• 8: GUNTHER, O., AND RIEI<ERT, W.-F. The Design of GODOT: An Object-Oriented Geographic Information System. IEh'E Data Engineering Bulletin 16, 3 (1993).
• 9: GUTING, R. H., AND SCIINEIDER, M. Realm- Based Spatial Data Types: The ROSE Algebra. Tech. rep., Fernuniversitat, Hagen, Germany, 1993.
• 10: Laura M. Haas , William F. Cody, Exploiting Extensible DBMS in Integrated Geographic Information Systems, Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Advances in Spatial Databases, p.423-450, August 28-30, 1991
• 11: Ilog Views Version 1.1, Reference Manual, 1993.
• 12: INGRES. Windows L4G. Tech. rep., Ingres Corporation, 1990.
• 13: Charles Lamb , Gordon Landis , Jack Orenstein , Dan Weinreb, The ObjectStore database system, Communications of the ACM, v.34 n.10, p.50-63, Oct. 1991 [doi>10.1145/125223.125244]
• 14: MAINGUENAUD, M., AND PORTIEIL, M.-A. CIGALES: A Graphical Query Language for Geographical Information Systems. In Proc. Intl. Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH) 11990).
• 15: OSF. Motif 1 .O programmer's guide. OSF Journal, 1989.
• 16: PLATEAU, D., CAZALENS, R., LBVBQUE, D., MAMOU, J., AND POYET, B. Building IJser Interfaces with the LOOKS Hyper-Objects System. In Proc. Eurographics Workshop on Object-Oriented Graphics (1990).
• 17: RIGAUX, P., SCHOLL, M., AND VOISARD, A. A Map Editing Kernel Implementation: Application to Multiple Scale Display. In Spatial Information Theory (COSIT'93) (1993), A. Frank and I. Campari, Eds., LNCS No. 716, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
• 18: Robert W. Scheifler , Jim Gettys, The X window system, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.5 n.2, p.79-109, April 1986 [doi>10.1145/22949.24053]
• 19: M. Scholl , A. Voisard, Thematic map modeling, Proceedings of the first symposium on Design and implementation of large spatial databases, p.167-190, February 1990, Santa Barbara, California, United States
• 20: SCHOLL, M., AND VOISARD, A. Object-Oriented Database Systems for Geographic Applications: An Experiment With Oz. Chapter 28 of 1121, 1992.
• 21: SEITZ, S., AND SCHANK, P. Picasso Widget Writer's Guide. Tech. rep., UC Berkeley - ERL, 1990.
• 22: Michael Stonebraker , James Frew , Jeff Dozier, The SEQUOIA 2000 Project, Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Advances in Spatial Databases, p.397-412, June 23-25, 1993
• 23: Michael Stonebraker , Lawrence A. Rowe, The design of POSTGRES, Proceedings of the 1986 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, p.340-355, May 28-30, 1986, Washington, D.C., United States
• 24: TECHNOLOGY, 0. 02 Link, 1992. Chapter 11 of the O2 Documentation.
• 25: Agnès Voisard, Towards a Toolbox for Geographic User Interfaces, Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Advances in Spatial Databases, p.75-97, August 28-30, 1991
• 26: VOISARD, A. Geographic Databases: .From the Data Model to the User Interface. PhD thesis, University of Paris at Orsay and INRIA, 1992. In French.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.1 Logical Design
          Subjects: Data models
      H.2.4 Systems
          Subjects: Query processing
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Windowing systems

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design