A research activity support system for the Italian cultural heritage

The work describes a system built on an existing database supporting at high level both data analyses and decision making in a humanistic environment with particular reference to the Italian cultural heritage. The user, a researcher or a scholar, may formulate queries, no matter how complex they are, aided by a friendly windowing interface. To achieve this purpose, he is able to define an appropriate data classification developing an impossible-to-foresee research strategy. In order to analyse the data, the system provides a set of relational-like operations. A sample of the possible applications of our approach to problems such as research analyses and planning in the environment of cultural institutions (museums, art exhibitions, and so on) has been shown.