Describing visual interactions to the database: closing the loop between user and data
John P. Lee, Georges Grinstein · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1996
This paper describes an `interaction interface' for visual database exploration. Visualization has been traditionally thought of as an output technology: this research places visualization into a broader context and aims to develop an input model for the visual exploration of databases. We first describe the data infrastructure of an integrated database-visualization system. We then extend the definition of visualization to include the data interactions allowed over the visualized image. We finally present the portion of this system that describes how interactions over data visualizations are mapped to the targets of the visual interaction: the various data objects in the system, or the database itself. In this way, the user is brought closer to the data because interaction is over a visualization, which is perceived by the user, and the correct effect of the interaction is automatically mapped to the appropriate underlying data object. We build on a fundamental taxonomy of empirically-developed data interaction, and use these interaction specifications in our object-oriented design.