Inspecting Concepts Graphically with Zoomable Lenses
Gary Ka Lai Ng, Carole Goble, Adrian J. West · 1997
This paper proposes a novel interactive tool designed to support the graphical inspection of large semantic models. The idea is to view the iterative inspection process as a series of recurring and cross-referencing model interrogations. Our tool employs movable lens filters [SFB94] as primitive interrogation units. Each lens is associated with a single operation, such as querying, result visualisation or filtering. A variety of complex queries and visualisation mappings can be constructed by superimposing the lenses. This paper describes the design and the anticipated benefits of the tool, with examples taken from the GRAIL medical terminology model, an extensive system currently containing around 8000 concepts. 1 Introduction The inspection of properties and relationships of concepts is one of the major tasks in the development of large knowledgebases, such as the terminology model of medical concepts developed as part of the GALEN project [RNJ93]. The model is being built using the...