Supporting high-bandwidth navigation in object-bases

Magritte is an attempt to construct a high-bandwidth front-end to an object-base containing meta-data about SCAD designs. SCAD is a small part of a family of visualization applications where the end-user concurrently manipulates large collections of active data. Such end-user interfaces require a different paradigm of interaction than the object-at-a-time interfaces of current databases. Proposals here can be divided into mechanisms for scene creation and those for scene integration. The former allow a user to create a single scene with ease. The latter help in desktop management by allowing scenes to be combined and correlated. The implementation experience points out a number of shortcomings in current database offerings that need to be solved so as to ease the design of high-bandwidth front-ends.<>