Microsoft Query by Example (QBE) is a method of creating database queries using examples based on a text string, the name of a document or a list of documents. The QBE system converts the user input into a formal database query. This approach allows the user to perform powerful searches without the need of having to learn a more formalized query mechanism such as Structured Query Language (SQL). It is derived from Moshé M. Zloof's original Query by Example (QBE) implemented in the mid-1970s at IBM's Research Centre in Yorktown, New York. Microsoft Access is an example of Microsoft QBE. Microsoft Excel allows results of QBE queries to be embedded in spreadsheets.
Famous quotes containing the word query:
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)