A Visual Query Facility for Multimedia Databases

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • El-Medani, Ghada

• Technical report TR95-18. Multimedia databases store large data objects with complex spatial and temporal relationships. For users to easily and effectively access and make use of this large information space, there is a need for an interactive user interface to act as an intermediary between the database and the user. Many existing multimedia systems provide a browsing-based user interface for their users. However, with large information spaces, browsing does not provide an efficient mechanism for accessing the database. Thus, there is a need for a query facility which enables users to pose queries to the database, and, directly, retrieve information of interest. This research determines the user interface requirements of multimedia information systems and provides a template solution. That is, it presents an easy and efficient way of accessing a multimedia database. This is achieved through a visual query facility which provides a rich visual query interface as well as a browsing facility. The visual query facility provides an interactive graphical interface, relieving users from having to type complicated queries which can be difficult. The system also provides users with the facility to customize system settings to suit their preferences and needs. The design and implementation of the visual query facility is targeted towards a news-on-demand application which is a distributed multimedia news application that allows its users/subscribers to remotely access multimedia news articles inserted in a distributed database over a broadband ATM network. However, the same design and implementation principles can be applied to other distributed multimedia applications. | TRID-ID TR95-18

• Date created

  1995

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Multimedia databases
  • Visual queries

• Type of Item

  Report

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3N26Q

• License

  Attribution 3.0 International