Hi, Del. I hope others will chime in here with examples of what they've seen or built because I also wonder how to best make the UI simple yet allow for all of the complex types of queries people need to do -- (), NOT, OR, etc.

When two or more of those elements is needed in the query app our folks currently use, they tend to end up running queries that go after an entire 15MM record table by mistake. They tend not to understand why something like NOT ( this OR that ) causes this. It's a training issue, but if the UI could let them make their choices in English and then write the SQL, that would be better.

Probably the best UI I've seen for simplifying this has been Stonefield Query, but most of my users likely would also struggle with that.

>I've got to face the same thing soon, so I appreciate the ideas. One of the things I will have to address is how to provide
>flexibility for sql clauses that group things, such as "where (this and that and those) or (these and them)".
>The main thing I need ideas for is how to construct a useable user inteface that provides both flexibility and ease
>of use. The query builder-like interfaces I've seen would not be very good for my users. Any good ideas or examples
>out there that I could look at?