ConQuer: A Conceptual Query Language

Relational query languages such as SQL and QBE are less than ideal for end user queries since they require users to work explicitly with structures at the relational level, rather than at the conceptual level where they naturally communicate. ConQuer is a new conceptual query language that allows users to formulate queries naturally in terms of elementary relationships, and operators such as “and”, “not” and “maybe”, thus avoiding the need to deal explicitly with implementation details such as relational tables, null values, and outer joins. While most conceptual query languages are based on the Entity-Relationship approach, ConQuer is based on Object Role Modeling (ORM), which exposes semantic domains as conceptual object types, thus allowing queries to be formulated in terms of paths through the information space. This paper provides an overview of the ConQuer language.