Research Issues

• The design of a logical architecture for the visual interface.
• The design and implementation of a text-based query language for queries on spatially indexed data. An extended form of SQL will be developed and implemented. In particular, this language will be similar to the access component of the MDBL language that is being developed for the scientific database project.
• The design and implementation of a visual query language for queries on both spatially-indexed and non-spatial information. In particular, languages based on the idea of query by example will be designed.
• The integration of the text-based and visual query languages into a single query language.
• The design of levels for both the textual and visual query languages that are appropriate for different levels of user expertise.
• The design and implementation of a set of procedures that support a browse facility on raster data sets. This browse facility will involve the use of wavelet decompositions of image and digitized map data in order to permit browsing to occur at different levels of resolution. It will be supported with the use a large subset of the image processing and data visualization procedures of the khoros system.
• The design, implementation and testing by the CIPR group of additional procedures that are not currently supported by khoros, but that are important for a browse functionality. Such procedures include image enhancement, image zooming, image registration and image fusion.
• The design and implementation of a hierarchical data structure and a set of procedures that support variable-resolution browsing of graph-based (vector) datasets. This functionality will mirror and complement that provided for raster datasets using the wavelet decomposition.
• The design and implementation of a mechanism for browsing that is based upon a metaphor of templates.
• A decision as to which procedures on spatially-indexed data will be supported by the client processor and which by the host processor.
• A query processing module that translates queries and makes decisions as to how the processing of the query will be distributed between the local processor and the host processor. This decision will be based on a complexity analysis of queries that takes account of such factors as the size of the datasets involved, the local processing power, the processing power of the host and information transmission rates.
• The implementation of the visual interface design.