Importance

Loading Importance Indicators...

Abstract

A database management system is disclosed having an object oriented representation of information describing characteristics of instances organized in a hierarchical structure that may be logically represented as a tree structure. The hierarchical structure includes a parent-child/class-subclass structure. The internal representation of an instance is dependent upon information that is locally available from a class to which that instance belongs plus inherited attributes from a parent class. A class is represented as a class object having a handle. The class object has a parent handle associated with it that identifies the parent class of the class object. The class object has a subclass list associated with it that identifies the handles of the classes that are subclasses of the class object. The class object has an attribute list associated with it that includes a list of handles which may be used to identify the attributes of the class object. A class object also includes a subtree instance count which represents the total number of instances that belong to that class object plus the total number of instances that are present in all of the descendants of the class object, i.e., the total number of instances that are present in that branch of the hierarchical tree structure. A graphical user interface is provided in which the hierarchical tree structure is displayed in a window showing classification structure, and a class or instance can be selected by clicking on the graphical representation of the class in the window showing classification structure. Attributes of the selected class or instance are simultaneously displayed in a window showing attribute information, which includes fields to the right of each attribute in which search criteria for that attribute may be entered. The subtree instance count is also displayed simultaneously to provide feedback to the user as to how many instances satisfy the current query, in order to facilitate guided iterative queries of the database.

Loading the Abstract Image...

First Claim