The Design of KIVIEW: An Object-Oriented Browser

KIVIEW is an object-oriented browsing interface to databases. The underlying internal model is a semantic network, defined via a collection of triplet facts which are governed by a small set of integrity requirements. KIVIEW's only ezternal structure is a display, called uiew, that presents all the information that is pertinent to a given object. KIVIEW features two kinds of activity, called nawgation and manipulation. Navigation is an exploration activity wherein the user repeatedly displays new views of objects that are referenced in current views. To speed up repetitive navigational tasks, which otherwise could become very tedious, viewa inay be eynchronized: the user sets up several viewa, linked in cr tree-like structure, so that when the information displayed in the root view is modified, the contents of the other views change automatically. Manipulation is a processing activity wherein the user operates on existing views to create new virtual views. Manipulation is interleaved with navigation to assemble information located while browsing into reeulte of browsing sessions. Using convenient graphic tools, these two activities are integrated into a single tool, which is flexible and effective, yet simple to use. This work waa supported in part by the European Communitiee under ESPRIT project 1117; the work of Motro was also supported by NSF Grant No. IRE8609912 and by an Amoco Foundation Engineering Faculty Grant; the work of Tarantino waa also supported by ENIDATA. 107 108 EXPERT DATABASE SYSTEMS