Miguel Ángel Sicilia Urbán

On the vague modelling of web page characteristics regarding usability

Vagueness is an inherent property of man-machine systems associated with some perceptual and cognitive characteristics of human information processing, as pointed out by Karwowski and other researchers. More concretely, some perceivable characteristics of interface designs, including sizes and quantities, are usually perceived by humans as vague categories that result in imprecise guidelines for interface usability. In this paper, we describe how such categories - in the specific case of the Web - can be modelled as fuzzy sets by using conventional membership function elicitation procedures, using Web page length and number of links as case studies. The resulting fuzzy sets can then be used for automated usability analysis processes using fuzzy rules to formalize vague guidelines.

Towards a Unified Query-by-Example (UQBE): UML as a Basis for a Generic Graphical Query Language

A generic graphical query language for ODMG-compliant object databases -- called Unified Query By Example (UQBE) -- is proposed, based on the ideas of Zloofs Query-By-Example, and using UML-like diagrams as schema notation. Both ease of learning for users coming from the relational world and support for non object-oriented data sources are also considered as design goals. The overall layout and some important features of the query language are described, along with its relationship with the UML repository architecture and several ODMG OQL translations of sample UQBE queries.