A Visual Database Environment for Scientific Research

Abstract This paper describes a visual database environment designed to be used for scientific research in the imaging sciences. It provides hierarchical relational structures that allow the user to model data as entities possessing properties, parts and relationships, and it supports multi-level queries on these structures. A schema constructor interface allows users to define for each structure, not only its components, but also its visualization, which is built from its components using graphical primitives. Finally, an experiment management subsystem allows users to construct and run computational experiments that apply imaging operators to data from the database. The experiment management system keeps track of the experimental procedures developed by the user and the results generated by executing these procedures.