Enhanced Query-by-Object approach for information requirement elicitation in large databases

Abstract

Information Requirement Elicitation (IRE) recommends a framework for developing interactive interfaces, which allow users to access database systems without having prior knowledge of a query language. An approach called 'Query-by-Object' (QBO) has been proposed in the literature for IRE by exploiting simple calculator like operations. However, the QBO approach was proposed by assuming that the underlying database is simple and contains few tables of small size. In this paper, we propose an enhanced QBO approach called Query-by-Topics (QBT), for designing calculator like user interfaces for large databases. We use methodologies for clustering database entities and discovering topical structures to represent objects at a higher level of abstraction. The QBO approach is then enhanced to allow users to query by topics (QBT). We developed a prototype system based on QBT and conducted experimental studies to show effectiveness of the proposed approach. © Springer-Verlag 2012.