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Visual Display of Boolean Expressions

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5 replies

by bjhill

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Looking for ideas on tbe best method of visually displaying Boolean expressions. We have an application that uses rather complex Boolean expressions, and we're trying to determine the best means of communicating this complexity to the users. Usinga tree diagram gets very messy, very quickly. Does anyone have any suggestions?

5 replies

by neobrew

One of the nicest I've seen is in use on sybase.com for their solved case search. Basically, it breaks down each term of the expression and shows the muber of matches for each term, and then for the combined terms, in a horizontal tree. As an example, a search for "powerbuilder oracle web" returned:

powerbulder - 2397 ---+
oracle - 398 ---------+- & 6
web - 326 ------------+

For more complex results, the tree is larger. For brevity, they use & for and, | for or.

by bjhill

Not particularly helpful, at least without seeing a more complex tree, which we couldn't find or replicate on the sybase.com site.

by cobalt123

I like the visual mapping of orbiting plants and connections between linked terms. I don't know what hte tech term for this style is, but it is what I use when I am searching in http://www.kartoo.com in the web search...

In brainstorming, my ownpreference in notetaking is also this style as it helps me get away from the linear approach that really confines thinking AND visual representation.

by msahu

I have written a program for displaying the
the boolean expressions . I have used Binary Tree for this . Ya It was messy but very intersting . My program also minimizes the boolean expression . It is implemented for Turbo C compiler . I m currently working to modify the program to Linux gcc compiler . Please send a mail to me to get the software.

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