A Tool for Query Formulation based on Entities and Roles

In order to formulate valid queries on a relational database, one must be fluent in SQL (Structured Query Language), the concepts that it involves (entities, relationships, attributes) and the data schema describing the elements of the domain. However, casual users are not familiar with query languages and database structures, but would like to access data in a more user friendly way. The goal of this paper is to present a query formulation tool that allows casual users to easily build a query using an almost natural language, on a step by step basis, guided by the tool.