Exploiting Tag Clouds for Database Browsing and Querying

We show how tag clouds can be used alongside more traditional query languages and data visualisation techniques as a means for browsing and querying databases. Our approach is based on a general, extensible framework that supports different modes of visualisation as well as different database systems. A number of demonstrator databases and interfaces will be used to show how tag clouds can be used to visualise and browse data or metadata and even a mix of both in object databases and relational databases. Further, we will demonstrate synchronised browsing based on tag clouds as well as ways in which tag clouds can be combined with other forms of querying and data visualisation.