TY - GEN
T1 - Querying databases by snapping blocks
AU - Silva, Yasin
AU - Chon, Jaime
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.
PY - 2015/5/26
Y1 - 2015/5/26
N2 - A key area of focus in recent Computer Science education research has been block-based programming. In this approach, program instructions are represented as visual blocks with shapes that control the way multiple instructions can be combined. Since programs are created by dragging and connecting blocks, the focus is on the program's logic rather than its syntax. In this demonstration we present DBSnap, a system that enables building database queries, specifically relational algebra queries, by connecting blocks. A differentiating property of DBSnap is that it uses a visual tree-based structure to represent queries. This structure is, in fact, very similar to the intuitive query trees commonly used by database practitioners and educators. DBSnap is also highly dynamic, it shows the query result and the corresponding relational algebra expression as the query is built and enables the inspection of intermediate query results. This paper describes DBSnap's main design elements, its architecture and implementation guidelines, and the interactive demonstration scenarios. DBSnap is a publicly available system and aims to have a transformational effect on database learning.
AB - A key area of focus in recent Computer Science education research has been block-based programming. In this approach, program instructions are represented as visual blocks with shapes that control the way multiple instructions can be combined. Since programs are created by dragging and connecting blocks, the focus is on the program's logic rather than its syntax. In this demonstration we present DBSnap, a system that enables building database queries, specifically relational algebra queries, by connecting blocks. A differentiating property of DBSnap is that it uses a visual tree-based structure to represent queries. This structure is, in fact, very similar to the intuitive query trees commonly used by database practitioners and educators. DBSnap is also highly dynamic, it shows the query result and the corresponding relational algebra expression as the query is built and enables the inspection of intermediate query results. This paper describes DBSnap's main design elements, its architecture and implementation guidelines, and the interactive demonstration scenarios. DBSnap is a publicly available system and aims to have a transformational effect on database learning.
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U2 - 10.1109/ICDE.2015.7113404
DO - 10.1109/ICDE.2015.7113404
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84940842435
T3 - Proceedings - International Conference on Data Engineering
SP - 1472
EP - 1475
BT - 2015 IEEE 31st International Conference on Data Engineering, ICDE 2015
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 2015 31st IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, ICDE 2015
Y2 - 13 April 2015 through 17 April 2015
ER -