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stephenr on April 19, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask HN: Creating a query builder for end users

I faced the same basic concept a number of years ago, and we had to make it work for barely computer literate police.

Basically, we used a single piece of software's single feature as our reference, for describing it to others and for how to handle the experience.

iTunes Smart Playlists. (https://www.evernote.com/shard/s136/sh/7f5f39a1-6c85-4853-aa...)

I have yet to see a better interface (than iTunes) for building what are essentially custom queries.

matt2019 on April 19, 2014 [–]

I think that this can be improved by removing the All and Any operators and instead letting segmentations be nested. So for example:

  All
    a = b
    Any
      All
        c = d
        d = f
      c = e

would be

  a = b
    c = d
      d = f
    c = e

I think that it is more intuitive to segment the set as you go.

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