MULTIPARADIGM QUERY INTERFACE TO AN OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASE

The object-oriented paradigm has a number of widely recognised strengt hs when applied to data management, but the increased complexity of ac tual systems compared with their relational predecessors often means t hat such databases are less readily accessible to non-programmers than relational systems. A number of proposals have been made for textual, form-based and graph-based query interfaces to object-oriented databa ses, but it is clear that a single approach cannot be considered to be the best, given the wide range of potential user groups, application domains and tasks. The paper presents a query interface to an object-o riented database which supports alternative user-level query paradigms in a fully integrated environment, thereby enabling different categor ies of user to select a preferred interface paradigm from a list of op tions. Furthermore, the interface enables users to examine queries wri tten in one query interface using any of the other interface paradigms , which is useful for sharing queries in the multi-paradigm context, a nd for helping users familiar with one approach to learn another. The system has been prototyped using the ADAM object-oriented database sys tem, and an experimental comparison of different interaction modes has been conducted.