Nested Concept Graphs: Applications for Databases

The processing of information has increased to an astonishing level in the recent decades, database systems have grown more and more powerful. However, the power to use the stored information is not easily accessible. Often the interface is very restrictive, using predefined forms, or the database logic has to be accessed by entering queries in the database query language, most often SQL. Given the proximity of the logic of relational databases and formal logic, a graphical logic system as they are being developed in the context of Conceptual Graphs, should be both easy and powerful enough to support users in their interaction with databases. The application of the results of [Dau03] to this task lead to the Nested Concept Graphs who are presented in an informal fashion in this paper. We show that they have indeed the expressivity to represent database queries, and argue that they might be suited as a practical query interface to relational databases