A framework for choosing a database query language

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a systematic approach to matching categories of query language interfaces with the requirements of certain user types. The method is based on a trend model of query language development on the dimensions of functional capabilities and usability. From the trend model the following are derived: a classification scheme for query languages, a criterion hierarchy for query language evaluation, a comprehensive classification scheme of query language users and their requirements, and preliminary recommendations for allocating language classes to user types. The method integrates the results of existing human factors studies and provides a structured framework for future research in this area. Current and expected developments are exemplified by the description of "new generation" database query languages. In a practical query language selection problem, the results of this paper can be used for preselecting suitable query language types; the final selection decision will also depend on organization-specific factors, such as the available database management system, hardware and software strategies, and financial system costs.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	Alfred V. Aho , Jeffrey D. Ullman, Universality of data retrieval languages, Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages, p.110-119, January 29-31, 1979, San Antonio, Texas [doi>10.1145/567752.567763]
	2	A. V. Aho , Y. Sagiv , J. D. Ullman, Efficient optimization of a class of relational expressions, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.4 n.4, p.435-454, Dec. 1979 [doi>10.1145/320107.320112]
	3	Antonio Albano , Luca Cardelli , Renzo Orsini, GALILEO: a strongly-typed, interactive conceptual language, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.10 n.2, p.230-260, June 1985 [doi>10.1145/3857.3859]
	4	ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CORPORATION, 1982. Intellect Query System, Reference Manual.
	5	M. M. Astrahan , M. W. Blasgen , D. D. Chamberlin , K. P. Eswaran , J. N. Gray , P. P. Griffiths , W. F. King , R. A. Lorie , P. R. McJones , J. W. Mehl , G. R. Putzolu , I. L. Traiger , B. W. Wade , V. Watson, System R: relational approach to database management, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.1 n.2, p.97-137, June 1976 [doi>10.1145/320455.320457]
	6	Madeleine Bates , Robert J. Bobrow, Information retrieval using a transportable natural language interface, Proceedings of the 6th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, June 06-08, 1983, Bethesda, Maryland
	7	BORGIDA, A., GREENSPAN, S., MYLOPOULOS, g., AND VASSILIOU, Y. 1986. Towards a knowledge description language. In On Knowledge Base Management Systems, J. Mylopoulos and M. L. Brodie, Eds. Springer-Verlag, New York (in press).
	8	R J Brachman , H J Levesque, What makes a knowledge base knowledgeable? A view of databases from the knowledge level, Proceedings from the first international workshop on Expert database systems, p.69-78, January 1986, Kiawah Island, South Carolina, United States
	9	Raymond F. Boyce , Donald D. Chamberlin , W. Frank King, III , Michael M. Hammer, Specifying queries as relational expressions: the SQUARE data sublanguage, Communications of the ACM, v.18 n.11, p.621-628, Nov. 1975 [doi>10.1145/361219.361221]
	10	Michael L. Brodie , Joachim W. Schmidt, Final report of the ANSI/X3/SPARC DBS-SG relational database task group, ACM SIGMOD Record, v.12 n.4, p.1-62, July 1982 [doi>10.1145/984555.1108830]
	11	BROSEY, M., AND SHNEiDERMAN, B. 1978. Two experimental comparisons of relational and hierarchical database models. Int. J. Man-Mach. Stud. I0.
	12	Mark R. Brown , Roderic G. G. Cattell , Norihisa Suzuki, The cedar DBMS: a preliminary report, Proceedings of the 1981 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, April 29-May 01, 1981, Ann Arbor, Michigan [doi>10.1145/582318.582350]
	13	Jaime Guillermo Carbonell, Subjective understanding: computer models of belief systems., 1979
	14	CHANDRA, A., AND HAREL, D. 1982. Structure and complexity of relational queries. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 25, 2, 99-128.
	15	CHANa, N. S., AND FU, K. S. 1979. Query-by-pictorial example. In IEEE Proceedings of the 3rd International Computer Software and Application Conference. IEEE, New York.
	16	CINCOM SYSTEMS, INC. 1978. Total Information System, The Next Generation of Software.
	17	W F. Clocksin , Christopher S. Mellish, Programming in Prolog (2nd ed.), Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, NY, 1984
	18	CODASYL DATA BASE TASK GROUP, 1971. Final report. In Conference on Data System Languages (Apr.). ACM, New York.
	19	E. F. Codd, A relational model of data for large shared data banks, Communications of the ACM, v.13 n.6, p.377-387, June 1970 [doi>10.1145/362384.362685]
	20	CODD, E. F. 1971. A data base sublanguage founded on the relational calculus. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGFIDET Workshop on Data Description, Access and Control (San Diego, Calif.). ACM, New York, pp. 35-68.
	21	CODD, E. F. 1972. Relational completeness of data base sublanguages. In Data Base Systems, R. Rustin, Ed. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., pp. 65-98.
	22	CODD, E. F. 1974. Seven steps to Rendezvous with the casual user. In Data Base Management, J. W. Klimbie and K. L. Koffeman, Eds. North-Holland, New York, pp. 179-199.
	23	CODD, E. F. 1978. How about recently? In Databases: Improving Usability and Responsiveness, B. Shneiderman, Ed. Academic Press, Orlando, Fla., pp. 3-29.
	24	CUFF, R. N. 1980. On casual users. Int. J. Man- Mach. Commun. 12, 2, 163-187.
	25	DAMERAU, F. J. 1979. The transformational question answering (TQA) system operating statistics. IBM Res. Rep., RC 7739, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
	26	Clarence A. Ellis , Gary J. Nutt, Office Information Systems and Computer Science, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.12 n.1, p.27-60, March 1980 [doi>10.1145/356802.356805]
	27	David W. Embley , George Nagy, Behavioral Aspects of Text Editors, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.13 n.1, p.33-70, March 1981 [doi>10.1145/356835.356838]
	28	FIELDS, C., AND NEGROPONTE, N. 1976. Using new clues to find data. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases.
	29	James D. Foley , Andries Van Dam, Fundamentals of interactive computer graphics, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1982
	30	GABLE, A., AND PAGE, C. V. 1980. The use of artificial intelligence techniques in computer-assisted instruction. Int. J. Man-Mach. Stud. 12, 3, 259- 282.
	31	GOLDBERG, A., AND ROBSON, 1981. Special issue on Smalltalk. BYTE (Aug.).
	32	Nathan Goodman , Oded Shmueli, Tree queries: a simple class of relational queries, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.7 n.4, p.653-677, Dec. 1982 [doi>10.1145/319758.319775]
	33	GOULD, J. D., AND ASCHER, R. 1975. Use of an IQF~ like query language by nonprogrammers. Tech. Rep. RC5279, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
	34	GREENBLATT, D., AND WAXMAN, J. 1978. A study of three database query languages. In Databases: Improving Usability and Responsiveness, B. Shneiderman, Ed. Academic Press, Orlando, Fla., pp. 77-97.
	35	HARRIS, L. R. 1977. User oriented database query with the ROBOT natural language query system. Int. J. Man-Mach. Stud. 9, 6, 697-713.
	36	Gary G. Hendrix , Earl D. Sacerdoti , Daniel Sagalowicz , Jonathan Slocum, Developing a natural language interface to complex data, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.3 n.2, p.105-147, June 1978 [doi>10.1145/320251.320253]
	37	Christopher F. Herot, Spatial management of data, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.5 n.4, p.493-513, Dec. 1980 [doi>10.1145/320610.320648]
	38	Christopher F. Herot, Graphical user interfaces, Proc. of the NYU symposium on user interfaces on Human factors and interactive computer systems, p.83-103, November 1984, New York, United States
	39	HOEPPNER, W., CHRISTALLER V., MARBURGER, H., MORIK, K., NEBEL, B., O'LEARY, M., AND WAHLSTER, W. 1983. Beyond domain-independence: Experience with the development of a German language access system to highly diverse background systems. In Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Karlsruhe, West Germany), pp. 588-594.
	40	IBM, 1975. IBM Information Management System/ Virtual Storage (IMS/VS). General Information Manual, G 20-1260-3, IBM Corp.
	41	Neil Immerman, Relational queries computable in polynomial time (Extended Abstract), Proceedings of the fourteenth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing, p.147-152, May 05-07, 1982, San Francisco, California, United States [doi>10.1145/800070.802187]
	42	Matthias Jarke , Jurgen Koch, Query Optimization in Database Systems, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.16 n.2, p.111-152, June 1984 [doi>10.1145/356924.356928]
	43	JARKE, M., AND VASSILIOU, Y. 1984. Coupling expert systems with database management systems. In Artificial Intelligence Applications for Business, W. Reitman, Ed. Ablex, Norwood, N.J., p. 65-85.
	44	JARKE, M., TURNER, J. A., STOHR, E. A., VASSlLIOU, Y., WHITE, N. H., AND MICHIELSEN, K. 1985. A field evaluation of natural language for data retrieval, iEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. SE-11, 1, 97-114.
	45	Matthias Jarke , Jürgen Krause , Yannis Vassiliou, Studies in the evaluation of a domain-independent natural language query system, Cooperative interfaces to information systems, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, NY, 1986
	46	JARKE, M., MYLOrOULOS, J., SCHMIDT, J. W., AND VASS!LIOU, Y. 1986b. KBMS for software development. In Logic and Knowledge Base Management Systems, C. Thanos and J. W. Schmidt, Eds. Springer-Verlag, New York (in press).
	47	R. H. Katz , E. Wong, Decompiling CODASYL DML into retional queries, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.7 n.1, p.1-23, March 1982 [doi>10.1145/319682.319688]
	48	John Leslie King , Edward L. Schrems, Cost-Benefit Analysis in Information Systems Development and Operation, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.10 n.1, p.19-34, March 1978 [doi>10.1145/356715.356718]
	49	KRAUSE, J. 1980. Natural language access to information systems: An evaluation study of its acceptance by end users. Inf. Syst. 4, 297-318.
	50	KRAUSE, J. 1982. Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation in natuerlicher Sprache. Niemeyer, Tfibin~ gen, West Germany.
	51	LACROIX, M., ANO PIROTTE, A. 1977. Domain-oriented relational languages. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (Tokyo, Oct. 6-8). IEEE, New York, pp. 37O-378.
	52	LACROIX, M., AND PIROTTE, A. 1980. User interfaces for database application programming. Tech. Rep., Phillips MBLE Research Laboratory, Brussels, Belgium.
	53	LARSON, J. A. 1983. Bridging the gap between relational and network databases. IEEE Comput. 16, 9, 82-92.
	54	Burt M. Leavenoworth , Jean E. Sammet, An overview of nonprocedural languages, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Very high level languages, p.1-12, March 28-29, 1974, Santa Monica, California, United States
	55	Michael Lebowitz, Generalization and memory in an integrated understanding system, 1980
	56	LEHMANN, H., AND BLASER, A. 1979. Query languages in data base systems. TR 79.07.004, IBM Heidelberg Scientific Center, Heidelberg, West Germany.
	57	LEHMANN, H., OTT, N., AND ZOEPPRITZ, M. 1978. User experiments with natural language for data base access. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (Bergen, Norway).
	58	LEVESQUE, H. J. 1984. The logic of incomplete knowledge bases. In On Conceptual Modeling, M. L. Brodie, J. Mylopoulos, and J. W. Schmidt, Eds. Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 165-186.
	59	Frederick Horst Lochovsky, Data base management system user performance., 1978
	60	F. H. Lochovsky , D. C. Tsichritzis, User performance considerations in DBMS selection, Proceedings of the 1977 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, August 03-05, 1977, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/509404.509425]
	61	Fred H. Lockhovsky , Dionysios C. Tsichritzis, Querying external databases, Proc. of the NYU symposium on user interfaces on Human factors and interactive computer systems, p.117-140, November 1984, New York, United States
	62	Thomas W. Malone, Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games, Proceedings of the 1982 conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.63-68, March 15-17, 1982, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States [doi>10.1145/800049.801756]
	63	Nancy Harriet Mcdonald, Cupid: a graphics oriented facility for support of non-programmer interactions with a data base., 1975
	64	MCDONALD, N. H., AND MCNALLY, L. P. 1982. Query language feature analysis by usability. Unpublished paper, Computer Science Dept., University of South Florida.
	65	MOORHEAD, W. G. 1976. GXRAM--A relational data base interface for graphics. Tech. Rep. RJ1735, IBM Research Laboratory, San Jose, Calif.
	66	Thomas P. Moran, Guest Editor's Introduction: An Applied Psychology of the User, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.13 n.1, p.1-11, March 1981 [doi>10.1145/356835.356836]
	67	A Motro, Query generalization: a method for interpreting null answers, Proceedings from the first international workshop on Expert database systems, p.597-616, January 1986, Kiawah Island, South Carolina, United States
	68	John Mylopoulos , Philip A. Bernstein , Harry K. T. Wong, A language facility for designing database-intensive applications, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.5 n.2, p.185-207, June 1980 [doi>10.1145/320141.320150]
	69	William M. Newman , Robert F. Sproull, Principles of interactive computer graphics (2nd ed.), McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, 1979
	70	PIROTTE, A. 1978. High-level database query languages. In Logic and Databases, H. Gallaire and J. Minker, Eds. Plenum, New York, pp. 409-436.
	71	PLATH, W. J. 1976. REQUEST: A natural language question answering system. IBM J. Res. Dev. 20.
	72	REiSNER, P. 1977. Use of psychological experimentation as an aid to development of query languages, iEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. SE-3, 3, 218-229.
	73	Phyllis Reisner, Human Factors Studies of Database Query Languages: A Survey and Assessment, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.13 n.1, p.13-31, March 1981 [doi>10.1145/356835.356837]
	74	REISNER, P., BOYCE, R. F., AND CHAMBERLIN, D. D. 1975. Human factors evaluation of two data base query languages--Square and Sequel. In Proceedings of the National Computer Conference (Anaheim, Calif., May 19-22), vol. 44. AFIPS Press, Reston, Va., pp. 447-452.
	75	ROSENTHAL, A., AND REINER, D. 1985. Querying relational views of networks. In Query Processing in Database Systems, W. Kim, D. Reiner, and D. Batory, Eds. Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 109-126.
	76	SAMET, J., Ed. 1981. Query languages--A unified approach. Report of the British Computer Society Query Languages Group. Heyden University Press, Cambridge, England.
	77	SCHANK, R. C., AND SLADE, S. 1984. Advisory systems. In Artificial Intelligence Applications {or Business, W. Reitman, Ed. Ablex, Norwood, N.J., pp. 249-265.
	78	Christopher Schmandt , Eric A. Hulteen, The intelligent voice-interactive interface, Proceedings of the 1982 conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.363-366, March 15-17, 1982, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States [doi>10.1145/800049.801812]
	79	Joachim W. Schmidt, Some high level language constructs for data of type relation, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.2 n.3, p.247-261, Sept. 1977 [doi>10.1145/320557.320568]
	80	Mike L. Schneider, Ergonomic considerations in the design of command languages, Proc. of the NYU symposium on user interfaces on Human factors and interactive computer systems, p.141-161, November 1984, New York, United States
	81	SENKO, M. E. 1977. DIAM II with FORAL LP: Making pointed queries with a light pen. In Proceedings of the International Federation of Information Processing (Toronto, Ontario). North- Holland, Amsterdam, pp. 635-640.
	82	David W. Shipman, The functional data model and the data languages DAPLEX, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.6 n.1, p.140-173, March 1981 [doi>10.1145/319540.319561]
	83	Ben Shneiderman, Improving the human factors aspect of database interactions, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.3 n.4, p.417-439, Dec. 1978 [doi>10.1145/320289.320295]
	84	SHNEIDERMAN, B. 1980. Software Psychology. Winthrop, Cambridge, Mass.
	85	Ben Shneiderman, The future of interactive systems and the emergence of direct manipulation, Proc. of the NYU symposium on user interfaces on Human factors and interactive computer systems, p.1-28, November 1984, New York, United States
	86	SMALL, D. W., AND WEI. DON, L. J. 1983. An experimental comparison of natural and structured query languages. Human Factors 25, 3, 253-263.
	87	SMETH, J. M., FOX, S., AND LANDERS, T. 1981. Reference manual for ADAPLEX. Tech. Rep. CCA-81-02, Computer Corporation of America, Cambridge, Mass.
	88	STOHR, E. A., TURNER, J. A., VASSILIOU, Y., AND WHITE, N. $. 1982. Research in natural language retrieval systems. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on System Sciences (Honolulu, Hawaii).
	89	STONEBRAKER, M. R., AND ROWE, L. A. 1977. Observations on data manipulation languages and their embedding in general purpose programming languages. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (Tokyo, Oct. 6-8). IEEE, New York, pp. 128-143.
	90	Michael Stonebraker , Gerald Held , Eugene Wong , Peter Kreps, The design and implementation of INGRES, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.1 n.3, p.189-222, Sept. 1976 [doi>10.1145/320473.320476]
	91	THOMAS, J. C. 1976. Quantifiers and questionasking. IBM Res. Rep. RC 5866, T. J. Watson Research Laboratory, Yorktown Heights, N. Y.
	92	THOMAS, J. C., AND GOULD, J. D. 1975. A psychological study of Query by Example. In Proceedings of the National Computer Conference (Anaheim, Calif., May 19-22), vol. 44. AFIPS Press, Reston, Va., pp. 439-445.
	93	Craig W. Thompson , Kenneth M. Ross , Harry R. Tennant , Richard M. Saenz, Building Usable Menu-Based Natural Language Interfaces To Databases, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.43-55, October 31-November 02, 1983
	94	TODD, S. J. P. 1976. The Peterlee Relational Test Vehicle--A system overview. IBM Syst. J. 15, 4, 285-308.
	95	Tou, F. N., WILLIAMS, M. D., FIXES, R. E., HENDER- SON, D. A., AND MALONE, T. W. 1982. Rabbit: An intelligent database assistant. In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Menlo Park, Calif.). AAAi, Menlo Park, Calif., pp. 314-318.
	96	D. Tsichritzis, LSL: a Link and Selector Language, Proceedings of the 1976 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, June 02-04, 1976, Washington, D.C.
	97	Jonn A. Turner , Matthias Jarke , Edward A. Stohr , Yannis Vassiliou , Norman White, Using restricted natural language for data retrieval: a plan for field evaluation, Proc. of the NYU symposium on user interfaces on Human factors and interactive computer systems, p.163-190, November 1984, New York, United States
	98	Moshe Y. Vardi, The complexity of relational query languages (Extended Abstract), Proceedings of the fourteenth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing, p.137-146, May 05-07, 1982, San Francisco, California, United States [doi>10.1145/800070.802186]
	99	VASSILIOU, Y., Ed. 1984. Human Factors and Interactive Computer Systems. Ablex, Norwood, N.J.
	100	Yannis Vassiliou , Matthias Jarke, Query languages—a taxonomy, Proc. of the NYU symposium on user interfaces on Human factors and interactive computer systems, p.47-81, November 1984, New York, United States
	101	VASSILIOU, Y., JARKE, M., STOHR, E. A., TURNER, J. A., AND WHITE, N. H. 1983. Natural language for database queries: A laboratory study. Manage. Inf. Syst. Q. 7, 4 (Dec.), 47-61.
	102	David L. Waltz, An English language question answering system for a large relational database, Communications of the ACM, v.21 n.7, p.526-539, July 1978 [doi>10.1145/359545.359550]
	103	Charles Welty, A comparison of a procedural and a nonprocedural query language: syntactic metrics and human factors., 1979
	104	Charles Welty , David W. Stemple, Human factors comparison of a procedural and a nonprocedural query language, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.6 n.4, p.626-649, Dec. 1981 [doi>10.1145/319628.319656]
	105	WOODS, W. A. 1984. Natural language communication with machines: an ongoing goal. In Artificial Intelligence Applications for Business, W. Reitman, Ed. Ablex, Norwood, N.J., pp. 195-209.
	106	Wooos, W. A., KAPLAN, R. M., AND NASH-WEBBER, B. 1972. The lunar sciences natural language information system. Tech. Rep., Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Mass.
	107	YORMARK, B. 1977. The ANSI/X3/SPARC/ SGDBMS architecture. In The ANISI/SPARC DBMS Model, Jardine, Ed. North-Holland Publ., Amsterdam, p. 521.
	108	ZLOOF, M. 1977. Query By Example: A data base language. IBM Syst. J. 16, 4, 324-343.
	109	ZLOOF, M. 1978. Design aspects of the Query-by- Example data base management language. In Databases: Improving Usability and Responsiveness, B. Shneiderman, Ed. Academic Press, Orlando, Fla.