Interface Information

Daniel Wong dmw@cs.wisc.edu

Preview of frontend

Description and Goal

This frontend really does not have any known dependency on any other project groups, except that it invokes functions on catalog provided by the sytem architecture group. If a fancier UI is to be supported, the frontend will need information from the DBMS, e.g. field width, to parse the output to the user. This is especially important when displaying the results of projections, and likewise, views and joins. In addition to the GUI, we will also support function to process DDL requests. Specifically, a set of functions, such as dbcreate, dbdelete, create_relation, delete_relation, create_index, delete_index, and bulk-load will be provided, initially as command line programs, then incoporated into the GUI.

External Interface of GUI

Basically, a function Init_GUI(char* ) will be provided for the start up module of Minirel, with the arg being the directory of where all tcl/tk scripts are located.

Browser.h
Util.h

Some outlines of utility implementations

Progress/Todo

Database utility and GUI

GUI for the database, relation, attribute, and query browser ... in place..
Various other browsers ... in place ..
Utilities GUI ... in place ..
Integrate tcl and C ... in place ..
Utilities functions ... in place ..
Interface layer with QBE .. in place ..
Display function .. in place ..
Minirel main modules .. waiting for help! ..
Testing facilities/scripts

Parsing engine for the QBE->SQL

GUI for relation table, condition box, unnamed columns ... in place ..
Simple project, select, join ... in place ..
Simple update, insert and delete w/wo subqueries ... in place ..
Use of unnamed columns and condition box ... in place ..
Self-joins/unions - multi-row projections ... in place ..
Simple not/Negations ... in progress ..
Aggregate functions
Multi-statement inserts, updates, deletes
Error Detections

p.s. This is a TWO class project. :)

Planned "Nice-To-Have-Features"

Database browser - browse the list of databases available
Relation browser - browse the list of relations available for a database
Attribute browser - browse the list of attributes in a relation
Query editor - manually edit the query before forwarding to the DBMS
Arbitrary number of unnamed columns and/or condition boxes allowed
Toggle display of attributes

Suggestions

Last Updated: April 20, 1995
dmw@cs.wisc.edu