Databases will visualize queries too
Wolfgang Gatterbauer · Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment · 2011
Visual Query Languages study ways to help users compose queries with visual metaphors. Information Visualization studies automatic visualization techniques to help users understand and analyze data. Query Management focuses on ways to help users manage and re-use existing queries. We observe that there is a related research question across those three topics which has not received much attention, namely that of Query Visualization: How to visually represent a query to help users quickly understand its intent? Here we argue that the involved challenges are still markedly different from those of the other three, that a solution can considerably improve the usability of DBMSs, and that the topic is thus worthy of attention. We envision, that in a few years, there will be free, modular, and lightweight tools available that allow users to visualize and interpret their queries.