JPH01169675A - Method for editing data base - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a method for processing map and drawing information, and in particular, a visual editing operation for a multimedia database that manages data with different characteristics such as graphical attributes. The present invention relates to an editing method suitable for editing.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, as a database editing method, a method has already been proposed in which the contents of the database are displayed on a display device such as a CRT to visually support editing. For example, literature 1
: Information Processing Society of Japan Research Report 87-DB-57-1 Or object-oriented RDB search method using visual information J
(1987), or Reference 2: Information Processing Society of Japan Research Report 8
7-DB-57-6r Workstation Database Management System - WS-DBMSJ (1987) displays the contents of a relational database on a bitmap display and allows you to manage the database simply by specifying various menus and icons. A method for searching and editing has been proposed.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

In all of the above conventional technologies, the data to be processed is a single table type data, and no consideration is given to data that spans multiple tables or correspondence editing between multimedia information such as figures and table type data. There wasn't.

An object of the present invention is to realize a multimedia information editing method that allows the above-mentioned editing operations to be executed efficiently.

[Means for solving problems]

The above purpose is to display multiple tables adjacent to each other in one window, display a mark at a position specified by a mouse, etc., and the system to store pointer information that relates data to which the mark is attached. Visual editing is accomplished by: Furthermore, editing of different types of media, such as graphics, images, and attributes, can be accomplished by displaying graphics or images of elements corresponding to the contents marked at designated positions in the table.

[Effect]

By the means described above, only the content of substantive information that is familiar to database users is displayed, and related information that is difficult for users to understand is displayed as marks, so that the editing efficiency of multimedia information is greatly improved.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIG. Second
The figure shows a simple configuration example of a system that implements the present invention, and includes a central processing unit CP (100), a part of memory (101,) for data manipulation and program execution, File device = 3- (102) for storing the database, and a display device (103) and keyboard (104) for displaying data and visually performing editing.
, a mouse (105), etc.

In such a system, the information in the database to be edited is divided into a part that stores entities such as buildings, pipes, and coordinates, as shown in Japanese Patent Application No. 62-114637,
It is assumed that coordinates and parts that relate entities such as figures are stored separately. That is, as shown in Figure 1,
Entities are organized in an entity table group ((b) to (d)) consisting of the label of each entity and each attribute data, and the relationship between entities is constituted by the entity name of the source of the relationship and the name of the entity of the destination. Each is stored in the related table group ((e)). An overview of how a user can edit a database in such a relational table structure is as follows. First, from among these entity table groups, one set of tables for which relationships between entities are to be selected is selected, and the first table is displayed on the display device 103.
A part of the entity table that is the source of the relationship and a part of the entity table that is the destination of the relationship are respectively displayed in the format of the editing main screen shown in the figure (,). In this case, since the display area of the physical table in the main editing plane is limited and small, it is necessary to make it possible to display any position within the table, that is, to be able to scroll in any direction vertically or horizontally within the table. Configure the display system. In such a configuration, when a user edits a database, the user limits the range of data to be edited using file search, screen scrolling, etc. ), the relationship information between entities is marked and displayed according to the contents in the relationship table. If you want to create a new relationship between entities or change an existing relationship, use the mouse to specify the position of the entity element that is the source of the relationship that appears on the display screen, display a mark, and Display the specified mark with the same position of the entity element.

The system stores relationship information between entities in a relationship table in synchronization with the timing at which the user performs a series of these editing operations.

The contents of the second editing operation will be specifically explained below using a simple example. FIG. 3 shows the specific contents of the entity table group, and each entity such as facility drawings, pipelines, etc. is stored as an independent table. At the beginning of the column of each entity table, the drawing number, pipeline number,
Place physical labels such as valve numbers, and
The columns after the th column have the attributes of each entity, such as history and material. From these entity tables,
Using the drawings in the facility drawing table (MAP-TAB) and the pipelines in the pipeline table (PIPE-TAB), it is possible to determine which pipelines belong to the facility diagrams that are managed by district. This section explains the editing operations for adding. FIG. 5(a) shows the display device (103) in this case.
) shows the contents of the editor main screen above, with a part of the related facility drawing table displayed on the left side of the screen, and a part of the related pipeline table displayed on the right side of the screen. There is. Arrow symbols such as ↓ and Yasu shown at the bottom of the screen indicate the scrolling direction for scrolling the contents of each table. For example, if a position near the Q symbol in the lower left corner is designated using the mouse (105), horizontal scrolling of the left half of the screen is executed, and scrolling to the left or right is possible by controlling the mouse buttons. Such a scrolling operation controls the editing target to exist within the screen. However, regarding vertical scrolling, it is assumed that there is no relationship regarding alignment of left and right line positions. Under such display conditions, the mouse (105
) to add some data manipulation.

As the first operation, for example, if the drawing number in the facility table (MAP-TAB) on the left screen in Fig. 5(a) is
Consider an operation that specifies an entity that is 1. The specific operation in this case is to move the display arrow of the mouse (105) to the vicinity where the drawing number M21 is displayed, press the mouse button, and obtain the position coordinates. The system finds the line position closest to that position and superimposes a mark such as color or texture over the entire line.

The left screen of FIG. 5(b) shows a state in which the element of the facility drawing whose screen number is M21 is selected and the southern area of the corresponding row position is displayed as a mark. Next, as a second operation, another entity to be associated with the entity whose drawing number is M21 indicating this southern area is an element with pipeline number UL5 in the pipeline table on the right side, and an operation to specify that entity. I will explain about it. First, on the right screen, move the mouse to the vicinity of pipeline number UL5 and press the mouse button to mark the entire line position.

However, the mark display in this case uses a different color or texture to distinguish it from the mark display indicating the related selected element on the left side of the screen. For example, in Figure 5(b),
The related element on the left side is indicated by a diagonal line upward to the left, and the related element on the right side is indicated by a diagonal line upward to the right. By the above two operations, each element of the related party and the related party is selected. Finally the third
As an operation, a relationship is established between the above-mentioned related destination and the previous element. To do this, first, a window is generated on the CRT (103) with an operation menu for specifying a relational operation, and an item for adding a relation is specified from the menu. Depending on the timing of specifying the relationship addition menu, the color or texture of the superimposed marker changes, and the system also changes these entity relationships as shown in Figure 1 (e).
Stored in the relationship table. For example, in Fig. 5(c), specify the relation addition from the menu in the pop-up window, and then add the relation to the related and destination elements.
This shows a case where markers having a common color or texture are displayed in a superimposed manner (the cross-hatched area in FIG. 5(c)).

The above three operations for associating can be applied repeatedly. For example, in FIG. It shows the results of the relationship by repeatedly applying the
3 shows a state in which UL5 and UL5 are associated with each other. Also, Figure 5 (
Section e) describes the function of checking which components are related by the operations described so far. , and the related parts are marked.

The contents of the operations on the display screen for a series of three data operations have been described above, but below we will explain in detail the processing that the system performs in response to each operation in order to realize these operations. Shown below.

First, the method of specifying the first and second physical column positions is as follows.

(Step) Calculate the mouse position coordinates P (Px, Py) in synchronization with the pressing operation of the mouse button.

(Step 2) In order to display the relationship table, the X coordinate meter of the specified position can be used to determine which screen belongs to the left or right screen, and the Y coordinate Py can be used to determine which screen belongs to the specified position. , calculate the row position to which it belongs, according to the following formula.

-Right side when <Px<DX surface (m - 1,) < P y < □・m.

n
It belongs to the mth column from the bottom of n.

However, in the above formula, DX and DY are X on the screen.

The size in the Y direction and n indicate the number of screen divisions in the Y direction. Also, the number of scrolls JR, J on each left and right screen
It is assumed that l is memorized.

(Step 3) The name of the table to be processed in the table in FIG. 3 is determined from the determination of the left and right sides of the screen. Furthermore, from the determination of the column position, the column position from the beginning in the table to be processed can also be determined by the following equation.

(n-m) + (JRor Jr,) Xn
However, JR, JL (=0.1, 2, . . . ) are the number of scrolls on each screen, and n is the number of columns on the screen.

Next, the third relational operation is as follows.

(Step H) The entity element name of the related element specified in operation 1, the table name, and the column name of the entity element in the table are obtained and listed. In this case, the list would be (M21.MAP-TAB, drawing number).

(Step 2) Similarly to the previous step, the entity element name of the related element specified in operation 2, the table name, and the column name of the entity element in the table are obtained and listed. In this case, the list would be:

(Step 3) The list obtained up to the previous step is
Depending on the timing of operation 3, it is registered in the inter-entity relationship table REL-TAB shown in FIG. This REL-T
Regarding the "order" of column names in AB, (St
epl2) is repeated, Q, 1, 2 . It shall be increased as follows. Also, among the column names, “direction” is
It controls the direction of geometric vectors, etc., and there is no need to consider it especially when editing between entities in operations 1 and 2 above.
Here, the editing operation 3 for associating the geometric entity shown in FIG. 3 (4) with other entities will be explained. In this case, since the geometrical entity can be displayed graphically, a multimedia-compatible method such as displaying the figure and the text information on the compilation main screen at the same time on the display device (103 in Figure 2) can be used. This is the editing method. In the editing operation, first, the drawing information is displayed on the display screen, and the display is controlled so that the editing target range appears on the screen. Furthermore, a window is generated to display the editing main screen, and the window position is operated so that it does not overlap with the editing target (
Figure 6(a)). As shown in Figure 6(b), an example of the content on the editing main screen is a part of the geometric entity table (on the left side of the screen) that is the relation destination, and a part of the pipeline table that is the relation source (on the left side of the screen). (on the right side of the screen) are displayed respectively.

In this case, the content of the geometric entity on the right side of the screen has a one-to-one relationship with the figure displayed as the background. For example, the figure corresponding to GOOL is ■, and the mouse (105) is pressed on the background screen. When you specify the position near that point (Fig. 6 (
a) Arrow), not only that figure is displayed as a mark, but also the column of the corresponding geometric entity GOOL on the editing main screen is displayed as a mark. On the other hand, the position of the geometry entity column on the editor main screen (
For example, G.

05), and the corresponding geometric entity can be marked and displayed as a figure (■ in FIG. 6(a)).

Among the multimedia information editing methods described above,
To specifically illustrate the method of editing geometric entities with relation to each other, consider a case in which a figure (a), a coordinate address storage table (b), and a coordinate table (c) as shown in FIG. 7 are provided. The broken lines in FIG. 7(a) indicate the boundary positions of pages (POI, PO2,..., PO2) that are management units; for example, the coordinate address storage table (ADR-TAB-01) of the first page. As shown in FIG. 7(b), the format is such that geometric element names and address information are associated with each other. first parenthesis
Various figures existing within the page are stored in a coordinate table as shown in (c). The structure of this coordinate table is as follows: N, the number of constituent points forming a segment, K, which indicates the type of line such as a solid line or broken line, and information (IS) indicating the state of each end point.

IE), and each coordinate value (Xi + yl) l (X2 + y2) l forming the vector
・It has a simple configuration in which (XN, yN) are lined up.

However, as shown in (c), the address used in the coordinate address storage table, etc. is the absolute length from the beginning of the coordinate table to the beginning of each record (ADO○M in the example of (C)).
Hail!

In such a situation, we will summarize the processing flow for realizing multimedia compatible editing such as between code data and figures.

Next, we will summarize the processing flow for realizing the multimedia compatible editing described above. First, specify the entity in the editing main screen, and then select the geometric entity corresponding to that entity.
The flow up to displaying a mark on the screen will be described. The general flow of this process is shown in Figure 8. First, the position pn specified by the mouse on the editing main screen is recognized (S
step101). The specified element position in the entity relationship table is determined by determining whether this specified position is on the left or right side of the editing main screen, as well as determining which line in each native plane it should be placed. and list them as (relation source (destination) element name, table name, column name) (Steps 102 and 103).

From the list obtained in the previous step, check whether there is one whose related destination (original) element name already matches the value of another related light element in the entity relationship table (REL-TAB), and find a match. Extract all elements. For all the elements extracted in this way, the name of the coordinate address storage table and the related element name are obtained (Step 104). Next, focus on each coordinate address storage table found and find the coordinate address value that matches the related element name (Step
105).

Then, the coordinate table is traced to the coordinate address position determined in the previous step, and the actual coordinate value sequence is determined. A figure is generated based on the coordinate value sequence obtained last, and displayed on the CRT with display attributes such as blinking as a mark (Step 1
07).

On the other hand, the general flow of the process of specifying a figure and displaying a mark on the editing main screen of an entity associated with the figure will be explained in accordance with FIG.

First, depending on the timing when the mouse cursor is operated near the graphic position you want to specify, find the position of the graphic component such as a point or line that is closest to that position, and then find the position address of each element in the coordinate table (Step 2
01). Next, referring to the coordinate address storage table in which geometric entity names and address values are associated, a geometric entity name that matches the address value of the coordinate table obtained in the previous step is obtained (Step 202). Furthermore, refer to the related element of the entity relationship table that stores the relationship between named entities, and find the related element name of the part where the geometric entity name found in the previous step and the coordinate storage table name at that time match ( Ste
p203). Next, focusing on the editing main screen, in addition to finding the related party and previous table name that are currently being edited, limit the items of the entity relationship table to be searched to only those that have these table names, and search for other items. The item is deleted (Step 204). Then, select the element that matches the related element name found in the step before the previous step (step 203),
Obtained by searching the entity relationship table (Step 205)
). If the matched element is a related element in the entity relationship table, the corresponding position on the left side of the editing main screen is marked, or if the matching element is a related element, the editing main screen The relevant position on the right side of is displayed as a mark (Step 206).

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, since it is possible to visually perform a relational operation between entities on a display screen, there is an effect of improving the efficiency of editing operations between media in a multimedia database.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a diagram showing the editing main screen on the display device, and the various entity tables (b) to 7 that are displayed are examples of figures that embody geometric entities (a), and the marks can be displayed from the links. A flowchart of the process to obtain the result. FIG. 9 is a flowchart of the process from specifying a graphic element to marking and displaying a selected graphic on the editing main screen. Explanation of Symbols In FIG. 2, 100 is a central processing unit, 101 is a partial memory, 102 is a file device, 103 is a display device such as a CRT, 104 is a keyboard, and 105 is a mouse.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a database system where the data managed within the database has two characteristics: entity information and relationship information between the entities, when editing the relationship information, the relationship information is directly edited. After displaying the entity information on the display device without editing it, the display position of the entity that is the source of the relationship and the display position of the entity that is the destination of the relationship are determined from among the entity information that is already displayed. A database editing method characterized in that information relating to a relationship between two entities is stored by simply performing an operation such as specifying a point with a pointing device such as a mouse. 2. In the editing method described in claim 1, if the entity information to be associated is other than code information, such as figures or images, those figures or images are displayed and the displayed entity position is A database editing method characterized in that relationship information between entities is stored simply by specifying it. 3. In the editing method described in claim 1, as a format for displaying the entity information for making the relationship on the display device, the entity information of the relationship source and the relationship destination is separated into at least two or more locations. A database editing method characterized in that each area is divided and displayed simultaneously, and each area can be scrolled independently.