An integrated approach to task-oriented database retrieval interfaces

Database retrieval systems experience a growing usage in different domains with varying groups of users. There is a need to help naive users to map their information requests onto the system and provide them with task-oriented support functions. A platform for the development and incremental extension of an interactive, graphical database retrieval interface which allows for incrementally embedding intelligent support modules is provided. This paper describes the task-oriented database retrieval interface TORI and its construction environment CENTRE. TORI provides a form-based user interface and basic task-oriented support mechanisms including dialogue history management, thesaurus support, and query reformulation help. CENTRE is a construction environment to ease the further development of TORI. Using UIMS techniques, it provides tools for constructing the user interface as well as the runtime environment for programming the further support modules to be integrated in subsequent versions of TORI.