Looking for convenient alternatives to forms for querying remote databases on the Web: a new iconic interface for progressive queries

The enormous popularity of the World Wide Web has made putting public access databases on the Web practically mandatory. Forms embedded within the Web clients (e.g. Netscape) are therefore emerging as the most common interfaces in database querying. Should this solution be considered completely satisfactory?We highlight some of the important limits we experienced with forms and we propose a convenient alternative solution, based on direct manipulation of icons. The system we have developed is easy to use and provides comfortable mechanisms for browsing, manipulating and reusing queries results as well as previous queries thus making feasible effective non-motonic, progressive query processes.