Mapgets: a Tool for Visualizing and Querying Geographic Information

Although geographic applications vary widely, their user interfaces have many requirements in common because of the spatial component of their data. Geographic data is not standard data, and appropriate tools are required (i) for editing (i.e., displaying and modifying) and (ii) for querying it. In this paper, we rstly study the major aspects of visualizing and querying geographic information within a database management system (DBMS) and their impact on the design of graphical geographic database user interfaces (GDUIs). We then present a map editing and querying model as well as a general GDUI architecture. Both rely on the concept of the mapget (map widget), a mediator for manipulating geographic information interactively.

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