An Interactive Query Language for External Data Bases

The amount of information that is available in computerized form is growing steadily. Two developments in recent years the growth of communication networks and the advent of videotex systems provide the potential for allowing the public convenient access to this information. In this paper we explore the nature of the mechanism by which people in their homes using a videotex information service might access data bases external to the videotex. system itself. We first consider briefly the process of accessing a data base (querying) in terms of the user interaction characteristics of the process. We divide the querying process into three parts: request, reply and dynamics. For all three parts, certain characteristics are identified that describe the parameters of the user interaction. We then propose some requirements that a query language for external data bases should have. With these requirements in mind we detail a design for such a query language.