VR Queries and their Transformations in a Progressive Querying Environment

We have proposed a progressive querying environment that enables the user to interact with the database by a sequence of partial queries, and to visualize both database queries and retrieval results in many different representations. In our approach, the user can query the database in the Virtual Reality (VR) space, and then switch to the logical space to continue the formulation of the query. This paper provides a formal definition and characterization of VR queries, describes what database operators are applicable under the different interaction paradigms, and investigates how VR queries can be transformed into other types of queries, so that they can be utilized as part of a progressive querying system.