User Interfaces for Structural Engineering Relational Databases

The needs of engineers in their interaction with engineering data bases are very different from those of their counterparts in the business world. Business data base management system interfaces typically provide only a single mode of textual communication, usually a structured query language. However, in an ideal engineering data base interface, an engineer would be able to define constraints, give examples, point at parts of pictures, and (sometimes) use several modes of communication simultaneously. The paper presents an example from an engineering design application to show how a traditional query language can be enhanced to accommodate the engineering needs. The paper further describes a conceptual approach for multimodal engineering data base interface combining multipurpose graphics, an engineering query language, and other interface methodologies in an engineering workstation environment.