Magic Lenses for Interactive Database Visualization

Ken Fishkin

SoftBook Press, Inc.

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Traditional Database Queries

Use a Special Language select title from movies where lead_actor=‘Connery, Sean’ and (year < 1960 or year > 1975)

Batch, non-visual

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Dynamic Queries (example 1) One

selector per attribute

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Dynamic Queries (example 2)

Selectors filter the display

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Dynamic Queries (limitations)

designed for a small number of attributes only global filters can’t screen on an attribute more than once no disjunctions limited query set

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Hybrid Techniques

language for ‘leaves’ of the query, visual interface for compound queries Still not all queries supported

ContentContent

DateDate

ContentContent

ContainsContains

is beforeis before

containscontains

Document ManagementDocument Management

05/01/9405/01/94

Visual Recall OSVisual Recall OS

AndAnd OrOr

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Magic Lenses

Movable local filters, which transform the data underneath them in some way, be it visual (magnifying lens), semantic (misspelled words), or other

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Merging Lenses into Queries

Put one attribute selector on a lens.

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#1 - local filters

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#2 - repeated attributes

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#3 - arbitrary number of attrs.

Just stack ‘em up.

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Consistent UI

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Query Power

2.5D order of windows implies a composition/evaluation order

Put an AND/OR toggle on the lens to indicate how it should compose: A AND B --> <A,AND> above <B> A OR B --> <A,OR> above <B>

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And/or in action

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Query Power(2)

NOT gets its own lens A AND NOT (B OR C)

<A,AND> <NOT> <B,OR> <C>

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Grouping

Introduce compound (grouped) lenses Allows parenthesizing allows macros Conjunction + Negation + Grouping ==>

support for arbitrary Boolean queries

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Extensions

No need to have just ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ - could have any/all of the 16 possible combinations.

Could just have a ‘NAND’ mode, but that would be non-intuitive. And/Or/Not are most common.

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Fuzzy Selectors

Selectors need not be ‘pass/fail’.

FalseFalse

TrueTrue

FalseFalse

TrueTrue

00

11

00

11

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Selectors over [0..1]

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Numerical Operators

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Fuzzy Composition

Selectors on [0..1] implies composition on [0..1]

Replace AND by MIN, OR by MAX, NOT by complement

Presently, have implemented arithmetic (“DIFF”), statistical (“SQRT”), and fuzzy (“VERY”)

Many others possible

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Fuzzy example

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Missing Data - display

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Missing Data - example

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Missing Data - composition

How do composition operators handle it? We treat it like IEEE NaN

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Conclusion (1995)

by merging Dynamic Queries with Magic Lenses, we keep the interactive, visual nature of queries, but add more functionality.

Future work: a slicker UI, user studies.

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Conclusion (2000)

If this is so great, why doesn’t everyone use it? Inter-app. Requires lots of “plumbing”, Xerox

licensing. OS X? Intra-app. Requires Xerox licensing. So far SGI

only one determined enough to do it.