2S The Visual Interface of the STAR Framework 1 Abstract Ronaldo S. Mello, Lia G. Golendziner, FlAvio R. Wagner Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Instituto de InformAtica Caixa Postal 15064, 91501-970 Porto Alegre RS, Brasil e-mail {mello.lia.fiavio}@inf.ufrgs.br Visual data management employed in EDA Frameworks helps in many design tasks, offering various facilities, specially related to the formulation of queries. In the STAR framework, a visual inteiface is the primary user inteiface to the system, allowing access to different managers and offering facilities for browsing and querying design objects. A graphical browser is available, allowing the navigation through design objects stored in the database, such that object properties can be shown and related objects can be investigated, departing from a selected one. Graphical queries can be formulated in an interactive way. Complex queries can be formulated via a textual SQL-like query language, extended with facilities for version manipulation and navigation in the inheritance hierarchy defined by the STAR data model. 1 Introduction Data management in eletronic design automation (EDA) frameworks usually includes design object mo- delling, complex object manipulation, design alternatives representation and version control. Databases, in this kind of application, store objects with different types of relationships: composition, representation and versioning [1]. These relationships raise several query possibilities, useful in different stages of the design process. From a database point of view, query formulation is usually done in a textual way. The disadvantage of a textual query language is that it does not apply to new or infrequent users considering that a good knowledge of the database schema and query language syntax is needed. This problem is being solved with the development of visual technology which provides user-friendly graphic interfaces and visual languages, allowing object visualization and manipulation in a graphical way. Visual data management employed to EDA frameworks helps in many design tasks, offering various facilities, specially related to the formulation of queries. Database browsing, for example, allows the investigation of descendants in a representation hierarchy. Object selection can be provided by an interactive query formulation. In this case, the designer can describe query conditions by selecting object properties, conditional symbols and constant values, for example. All these facilities and other 1 This work is partially supported by CNPq and CAPES. F. J. Rammig et al. (eds.), Electronic Design Automation Frameworks © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1995