AERIAL: ad-hoc entity-relationship investigation and learning

This paper discusses Browsing, an alternate style of working with databases, that facilitates the unplanned exploration of the structure and contents of a database by a novice user. We argue that Browsing promotes learning and helps bring the user's mental model of the problem space into correspondence with the model stored in the database. Browsing is illustrated through a learning scenario using AERIAL, a facility that allows the user to browse an Entity-Relationship database. The facilities provided by AERIAL are discussed in detail as well as their effectiveness in building the above correspondence. © 1993 Academic Press. All rights reserved.