An empirical investigation of factors influencing object-oriented database querying

  • Authors:

  • Prabuddha De;Atish P. Sinha;Iris Vessey

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of MIS & Decision Sciences, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469-2130, USA E-mail: pde@udayton.edu;School of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, P.O. Box 742, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA E-mail: sinha@uwm.edu;Department of Accounting and Information Systems, School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA E-mail: ivessey@indiana.edu

  • Venue:
  • Information Technology and Management
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Object-oriented databases (OODBs) provide an effective means for capturing complex data and semantic relationships underlying many real-world database applications. Because users' interactions with databases have increased significantly in today's era of client–server computing, it is important to examine users' ability to interact with such databases. We investigated a number of factors that potentially affect performance in writing queries on an OODB. First, we evaluated the utility of graphical and textual schemas associated with emerging OODBs from the perspective of database querying. Second, we examined the use of two different strategies (navigation and join) that could be used in writing OODB queries. Third, we examined a number of factors that potentially contribute to the complexity of an OODB query.Our exploratory study examined the performance of 20 graduate students in an experiment in which each participant wrote queries for two problems, one using a graphical OODB schema and the other a textual OODB schema. The participants had no prior exposure to the object-oriented data model. We found that there was no difference in query writing performance (either accuracy or time) using the graphical and textual schemas. Examination of query strategy revealed that a significant number of participants used a join strategy, rather than the navigation strategy that matches the database structure. Use of the join strategy resulted in significantly less accurate and slower query writing than did the navigation strategy. From the viewpoint of complexity, the number of objects referenced in a query, the number of starting points in the “from” clause, and the presence of special operators influenced both the accuracy and time of query writing.