ABSTRACT An Interactive Query Language for External Data Bases

The amount of information that is available in computerized form is growing steadily. Two developments in recent years- the growth of communication networks and the advent of videotex systems- provide the potential for allowing the public convenient access to this information. In this paper we explore the nature of the mechanism by which people in their homes using a videotex information service might access data bases external to the videotex. system itself. We first consider briefly the process of accessing a data base (querying) in terms of the user interaction characteristics of the process. We divide the querying process into three parts: request, reply and dynamics. For all three parts, certain characteristics are identified that describe the parameters of the user interaction. We then propose some requirements that a query language for external data bases should have. With these requirements in mind we detail a design for such a query language.