Direct Manipulation Spatial Exploration Using SVIQUEL

This paper represents the first effort to apply direct-manipulation (VIS) techniques to spatial data exploration providing mechanisms for visually querying as well as browsing spatial data and for reviewing the visual results for trend discovery. We present a visual query language (SVIQUEL) which allows us to specify the relative spatial position (both topology and direction) between objects using direct manipulation of spatial query filters. The SVIQUEL sliders (S-sliders) are complimented by an Active-Picture-for-Querying (APIQ) providing qualitative visual representations of the quantitative query specified by the S-sliders. This increases the utility of the system for spatial browsing and spatial trend discovery with no particular query in mind. The tight coupling between the quantitative S-sliders and qualitative APIQ allows the users to work either qualitatively or quantitatively depending on his/her particular needs and freely switch between the two while working in a continuous data exploration mode.