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Types Of Interface In Dbms | Interfaces in DBMS
What are we going to learn today?
What is an interface in DBMS?
Different types of INTERFACES in DBMS
Examples of different types of DBMS interfaces.
What is an Interface?
An interface is a program that allows users to query the DBMS without writing the code in query language.
An interface can be used to manipulate the Database either for adding the data, or deleting some data, or updating some data, or even for viewing the data present in the database.
Different types of interface
Form based Interface
Form based interface displays a form to each user.
The user fills out all the details and submits the form, to make a new entry into the database.
Or the user fills out some details and then the system retrieves rest of the details from the database.
Form based interfaces are built for Naïve users who have to do only a limited numbers of operations.
Many DBMS have different form Specification languages which help the programmers define such forms.
Example
Example of form based interface is a teacher adding the attendance of students in the system.
Or a student entering his roll number, class and branch in a form to retrieve his or her exam results.
Menu based user interface

These interfaces present the user with lists of options (called menus) that lead the user through the formulation of a request.
In Menus, the user don’t need to memorize the specific commands and syntax of a query language; rather, the query is composed stepby step by picking options from a menu that is displayed by the system.
Pulldown menus interfaces are mostly used in Webbased user interfaces.
They are also often used in browsing interfaces, which allow a user to look through the contents of a database in an exploratory and unstructured manner.
Example
Lets say you are searching for some item on a shopping website.
First thing you do is go the categories menu and select the category in which the item falls.
Then you select the brand from the menu of brands.
Then you search through different models of that item in the menu.
Then you might select the budget you have from the menu of budget range.
Graphical user interface
A GUI typically displays a schema to the user in diagrammatic form.
The user then can specify a query by manipulating the diagram.
In many cases, GUIs utilize both menus and forms.
Most GUIs use a pointing device, such as a mouse, to select certain parts of the displayed schema diagram.
Example of GUI
Lets say you are watching this video on Youtube.
If you press that subscribe button, either with a finger or a mouse, it will turn grey.
There are forms used in Youtube too, like you search some topic on Youtube.
There are Menus also used on Youtube, like Youtube shows you different videos on different channels, also it gives you menu to select videos of certain length or from certain time.
And all this interface is visually graphics and changes according the action the user takes.
Hence Graphical User Interface.

Natural language Interface
Natural language interface has it’s own unique schema more like the high level conceptual schema.
It also has its own dictionary of important words.
Basically it generates a query based on the interpretation of important words in the input by the user and if the interpretation is successful, then it displays the result to the user.
Example
Lets say, you want to find out what is the fastest car in the world, so you search for fastest car in India on a search engine like Google, which is a natural language interface.
The Natural language interface then looks at the important words in the input by the user:
Fastest, car, India.
Now it will go into the database of cars and search for all the cars that are available in India. Then it will check the car with highest speed among the cars available in India.
And finally it will show the outcome of the search to the user.
Speech Input and output
Nowadays it has become a common type of interface.
The users queries the interface with speech, and gets an answer or response in speech if the interface understands the query and interpret it.

Example
Most of you must have used either Siri on apple, or OK google, or Alexa or Cortana to ask some questions like,
“OK, google, find the value of square root of 729”
“Or Alexa, what is the capital of Nepal”
And these speech user interfaces interpret your speech input and processes the data from the database and after successful interpretation answers you back in speech.
If the query is not understood, it will ask you to repeat the query.