A Visual Representation of Complex Relationships for Object-Oriented Databases
Bonghee Hong, Bong-Gi Jun · Database Systems for Advanced Applications · 1995
It becomes complicated to represent complex object structures as a network of nodes and arcs when a large volume of objects is to be browsed. This paper presents the issues of designing and implementing an icon-based graphic user interface for representing complex relationship instances as a node-and-link form. The iconbased browser presented in this paper supports the simplification of the visual representation of complex relationships among instance level objects by introducing a new browsing method which uses instance-set-icon, active/inactive link, and inactive icon. We also discuss the issues of implementing a two-layer architecture which consists of a stored object layer and a window object layer in order to realize the simplified visual representation of complex relationships. The icon-based browsing for complex object structures has been implemented by using the Xl 1 Motif.