Objective
The KIM action aimed to develop a limited but demonstrable prototype of the KIM query environment, able to be installed on existing databases (managed by commercial products) and to:
- provide users with a graphic representation (at conceptual level) of the underlying database, making its physical organisation transparent to the user
- support the user in specifying the data to be retrieved from the underlying database, by means of graphical manipulations of its conceptual representation
- translate the resulting conceptual query into the actual commands needed to access the underlying physical database, presenting the retrieved data to the user.
End users are overloaded by major problems arising from differences in the tools, interfaces and languages that have to be used for querying databases and retrieving information. The knowledge based information management (KIM) action aimed to develop a limited but demonstrable prototype of the KIM query environment, able to be installed on existing databases (managed by commercial products) and to:
provide users with a graphic representation (at conceptual level) of the underlying database, making its physical organisation transparent to the user;
support the user in specifying the data to be retrieved from the underlying database, by means of graphical manipulations of its conceptual representation;
translate the resulting conceptual query into the actual commands needed to access the underlying physical database, presenting the retrieved data to the user. The prototype had the primary purpose of demonstrating the general validity of the concept, and of identifying the most effective refinements for several specific business environments.
The KIM query environment is based on, and complies with, international standards such as Unix, OSI, X-Window and OSF. It interacts with a database that is among the most consolidated products available. It should be emphasized that, according to the more general objectives of the KIM environment, the prototype is designed in order to enable its subsequent evolution towards the complete knowledge based integration of distributed heterogeneous environments, based on different tools managing multimedia data.
End-users are overloaded by major problems arising from differences in the tools, interfaces and languages (often alien to their natural way of thinking) that have to be used for querying databases and retrieving information. The availability of a uniform graphic interface for different physical data structures and their products would be a great help.
The prototype had the primary purpose of demonstrating the general validity of the concept, and of identifying the most effective refinements for several specific business environments.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
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00195 Roma
Italy