XQBE: a Graphical Environment to Query XML Data

XQuery, the standard query language for XML, is increasingly popular among computer scientists with SQL background, since XQuery and SQL require comparable skills. However, these experts are limited in number, and the availability of easier XQuery “dialects” could be extremely valuable. With this motivation in mind, we designed XQBE, a visual dialect of XQuery inspired by the QBE language (Query by Example). Coherent with the hierarchical nature of XML, XQBE uses one or more hierarchical structures to denote the input documents and one structure to denote the document produced in output. These structures are annotated to express selection predicates; explicit binding edges connecting the nodes of these structures visualize the input/output mappings. This paper presents XQBE through several examples and describes the main features of our implementation of the language, a visual editor coupled with an XQBE-to-XQuery translator. Indeed, the XQBE front-end is a general purpose user-friendly visual query interface, capable of providing access to any data storage system that exposes XQuery APIs. Available schema information can be exploited to guide users in querying data sets they are not familiar with. Also, switching between the visual and textual versions of the same query could be helpful for XQuery learners.