Bridging the boundaries between applications: Providing interactive interoperability for the end-user

YANUS is a frontend system directed at integrating Database Management Systems and other software packages. Yanus offers a conceptual interface of data objects and operations where the data objects correspond to data stored in a database and an operation corresponds to (i.e. is implemented as) an operation in an underlying software package. A schema is used that determines the applicability of certain operations to certain data objects. To enable the user to apply operations to data objects in all cases where this application is allowed, the user interface is "schema driven". Knowledge about the schema is used to control and help the user in applying operations to data objects. So-called workspaces are used to give the user access to a restricted part of the data object space and a restricted cluster of operations. Other workspaces can be accessed in such a way that all allowed operations can be applied to all data objects. In this, the user does not have to transfer data explicitly, this being done automatically by Yanus. Yanus also provides for data transformation when necessary and invokes the operations. The integration is extensible, due to the knowledge based approach. A test-bed for the system is the integration of a package for interactive pattern analysis (ISPAHAN) with a DBMS (Ingres).

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