Idea for a user-friendly / non-technical RAD tool for querying and reporting database

Question

I am exploring a tool that allows the user to execute database queries in a user-friendly manner for data extraction and reporting.

The primary requirement is that we cannot know the requests that users will make. Therefore, we need to develop a flexible user interface that allows them to point in a non-technical way.

My question is: do you know any tool that does something like this? Do you have an inspiring user interface?

Answer 1

For inspiration, there are five established approaches that I know of:

• List of attributes. For this table, you (the developer) provide a list of all attributes for which the user specifies the value of the request attribute. Sometimes the user also specifies operators (for example, Like, <,>, etc.); otherwise, it is fixed by you depending on the data type (the characters like, numeric, and date are used in the lines). All criteria between attributes are combined by logical I. If you allow the user to list values ​​for a single attribute, a logical OR is attached to them. Typically, users assume that an empty attribute value implies that this attribute is not included in the criteria. As a rule, you specify tables (tables) that are likely to be of paramount importance to users and rigidly bind them. Since tables, joins, and logical capabilities are fixed, this limits special flexibility, but in most cases it is more than enough. His most common approach is there.

• Request for example. Users select the tables that they want to query, and you provide an empty multitasking form (for example, a grid) that includes all the attributes of the joined tables; those. empty query result (in some cases, the user also selects attributes). The user fills in the attribute values ​​as if they were sample entries where it is assumed that an empty attribute is being changed. Thus, if priority and status values ​​are entered for the same record, their attributes are combined by logical I. If they are entered in different records, they are combined by logical OR. In some cases, the user can also specify operators for each attribute (for example, to specify ranges of values). This provides a very high level of flexibility and appears to be relatively intuitive for users.

• Chart request. The Tiziana Cararcis Query by Diagram approach allows users to define complex Joins and Boolean by graphically manipulating entity diagrams. For more information google for:

  • Catarci T and Santucci G (1995). Chart and text query languages: a comparative experiment. Materials of the IFIP working group. 2.6 Working Conference on Visual Databases (March).

  • Catarci T, Costabile MF, Levialdi S and Batini C. (1997). Visual query systems: analysis and comparison. Journal of Visual Languages ​​and Computing, 8 (2), 215-260, (June).

• Graphic filter request. The Ben Schneidermans filter flow approach allows users to define a complex logic process by creating visual operator networks and criteria using plumbing or an electric metaphor. Google for:

  • Schneiderman B (1991). Visual user interfaces for information retrieval. Continuation of the 54th annual meeting of the American Society of Information Sciences, 28 (Washington, DC, October).

  • Murray NS, Paton NW, Goble CA, Bryce J (2000). Kaleidoquery: a flow-based visual language and its assessment. Journal of Visual Languages ​​and Computing, 11 (2), 151-189 (April).

• Request for natural language Theres a lot of effort to try to parse natural language or semi-natural language into a structured request, but it did not have much success, in part because of the ambiguity of the natural language (for example, in "Commission income of all sellers assigned to the UK and Ireland" , "and" can be interpreted as logical OR or AND). You can try to return several results (one for each interpretation) for the user (for example, Google). Such an approach may be adequate for unskilled users and for those cases when a sufficient enough, but not quite correct result is enough.

Answer 2

Many modern web designers allow you to create fakes from your dubas. which are simple web pages containing crude operations. where you can search and view related records.

I personally saw Linq2SQL for asp and Ruby on the rails that do this. there are many more

Answer 3

The “user friendly” and “non-technical way” sounds like an Ad-Hoc report. In this case, you can look at the demo version of Ad-Hoc . But there are many other Ad-Hoc reporting tools.