Enhancing Dynamic Queries and Query Previews: Integrating Retrieval and Review of Results within one Visualization

The concepts of dynamic queries and query previews have shown to be useful in information systems because they allow users to search for information by directly manipulating a visual representation of the query and getting immediate and continuous feedback about the results. To enhance dynamic queries and query previews we combined them with dynamic screen layout for query formulation and a visual formalism for result presentation in a single screen. The user can refine his query and get an immediate preview of the results. Manipulating the query preview in turn directly modifies the visualization of the results without the need to switch back to a separate query screen. The combination of query, preview and result display gives us the opportunity to visualize dependencies between values of search attributes, which standard query previews do not show. The application domain is MURBANDY, a system for monitoring and modelling the change of land use in European cities.