BBQ: A Visual Interface for Integrated Browsing and Querying of XML [chapter]

Kevin D. Munroe, Yannis Papakonstantiou
2000 Advances in Visual Information Management  
In this paper we present BBQ (Blended Browsing and Querying), a graphic user interface for seamlessly browsing and querying XML data sources. BBQ displays the structure of multiple data sources using a paradigm that resembles drilling-down in Windows' directory structures. BBQ allows queries incorporating one or more of the sources. Queries are constructed in a query-by-example (QBE) manner, where DTDs play the role of schema. The queries are arbitrary conjunctive queries with GROUPBY, and
more » ... results can be subsequently used and refined. To support query refinement, BBQ introduces virtual result views: standalone virtual data sources that (i) are constructed by user queries, from elements in other data sources, and (ii) can be used in subsequent queries as first-class data sources themselves. Furthermore, BBQ allows users to query data sources H. Arisawa et al. (eds.), Advances in Visual Information Management © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2000 278 VISUAL DATABASE SYSTEMS with loose or incomplete schema, and can augment such schema with a DTD inference mechanism.
doi:10.1007/978-0-387-35504-7_18 fatcat:4huctron4fb43j62kf5xglvyf4