A semantic approach to usability in relational database systems

This paper attempts to design a user-friendly interface which enhances usability of relational database systems. Our approach to usability is to design a semantic data model suitable for a user interface and provide an easy-to-use query language DOMCALC (domain calculus language) which is based on the semantic data model. A query in DOMCALC can be described in terms of intuitive notions, namely domains, instead of relations and attributes. That is, DOMCALC requires for users no knowledge of a conceptual database such as relation names and attribute names. Therefore, the usability based on the semantic data model removes the requirement of knowledge of a conceptual database from users and protects user views from changes in the conceptual database. We also describe an outline of a database system PRIM (Prototype of Laboratory information Management System) which has been developed with the above considerations. This is a step toward the enhancement of usability in relational database systems.