  Although researchers have devoted considerable attention to helping database
users formulate queries, many users still find it challenging to specify
queries that involve joining tables. To help users construct join queries for
exploring relational databases, we propose ETable, a novel presentation data
model that provides users with a presentation-level interactive view. This view
compactly presents one-to-many and many-to-many relationships within a single
enriched table by allowing a cell to contain a set of entity references. Users
can directly interact with this enriched table to incrementally construct
complex queries and navigate databases on a conceptual entity-relationship
level. In a user study, participants performed a range of database querying
tasks faster with ETable than with a commercial graphical query builder.
Subjective feedback about ETable was also positive. All participants found that
ETable was easier to learn and helpful for exploring databases.

Databases