Visualization and Manipulation of Database Contents Using Corresponding Symbols

This paper deals with the problem of representing complex database contents to human operators and manipulating these contents in an intuitive and user definable way. This approach makes use of the graphical facilities of todays computer systems. Information presentation is achieved by displaying graphical components on a screen, where information manipulation is done via haptical interfaces (e.g. mouse, joystick) with optical feedback. We introduce corresponding symbols as universal and user definable interface between database contents and graphical presentation. The graphical attributes of these symbols (like form or color) correspond with the attributes of database information to be represented. Further we introduce a tool to create and arrange corresponding symbols and compose user interfaces for database visualization and manipulation.