Hello Vishal, You're facing an interesting problem indeed. The short answer is take a look at JSTOR and copy the advanced search interface. It includes several text fields and for each one, two list boxes with the "what to search" and the other one for the logical connector. This is a pretty basic one (a textual form interface) and the most popular way to implement this kind of UI (if you don't have access to JSTOR, try a search using the TheBat e-mail client).
But if your users are domain experts, in your example librarians, they would rarely search using a massive concatenation of logic connectors with ANDs, ORs, NOTs, etc, because searching in itself is an activity that nobody wants to put too much effort (well, this could be an exception with librarians :) and experts already know what to search. Big exception : this do not apply for researchers in the area of linguistics and other very specific areas. So, if the information is well conceptualizated in the system - i.e. permits operations of user collections so the logical connectives can be applied easily - you should end with one field for each of the most popular kind of searches like ISSN number, Title, MARC Record, Editor, and so on. That would be the indexed fields in the database. If you really want to go beyond, and have the possibility of design a WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer) interface, you can explore some visual queries systems ranging from diagrammatic interfaces including 3D capabilities like Winona or Amaze, iconic ones like IconicBrowser or hybrid ones like X-VIQU. Including metaphors like search trees, relevance spheres, would be an interesting experience too. Regards Hernán 2008/11/25 Vishal Iyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > This is a part Computer Science question, part Design question (apologies > if > some of the logic doesn't make sense) > So, I need to design a search interface that would eventually spit out a > boolean query without typing it out. > For Eg: > D= Data Field > > D1 AND D2 OR D3 AND D4 > (D1 OR D2) AND (D3 OR D4) > D1 AND (D2 OR D3) AND D4 > > To put it in context, assume its a library search and the user wants to > search books by Author A OR Author B that have Keywords A AND Keywords B > and > are published between a certain date range. Is anyone aware of design > patterns for such an interface. > > -Vishal > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Reply to this thread at ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35964 > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
