A Visual Browse/query Tool for Navigating and Retrieving Multimedia Data on Object Databases 1

It is widely accepted that both browsing and querying techniques are needed for eecient retrieval of multimedia objects. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of an integrated object browsing and visual querying system called IVORY(Integrated Visual brOwsing and queRYing system) for object databases. In IVORY, users can rst browse multimedia objects, which are visualized using icons in the browse/query window. With the browsed objects in the same window, they can specify a query in an integrated and visual manner by dragging attributes or relationships of their interest and dropping them onto query constructs. In addition, users can specify image comparison condition in the same way by dragging an image attribute and an example image onto the query construct. IVORY translates the visual query into an equivalent OQL query statement, which is executed by OQL query processor; however, image comparison condition is separated by IVORY and executed through content-based image comparison algorithm. Result objects of the OQL query are ltered by the image comparison algorithm and then displayed to users.