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- Windows 95 outlook 
- Different access levels to protect data 
- Tools and utilities to handle data and information 
The major role of the Windows 95 user platform was 
the main reason for developing the image database 
as a Windows 95 conform program. Because of the 
embedded 32-Bit features in Borland Delphi the 
image database can also be used under Windows NT 
4.0. This is important because in commercial offices 
and network environments you often find the 
Windows NT 4.0.platform. 
With the release 4.0 of Windows NT Microsoft uses 
the same workplace outfit under this user platform as 
known before from Windows 95. So the requirement 
of a Windows 95 outlook or so called look and feel is 
a logical consequence. 
To provide the data of the image database from 
illegal access and manipulation, different user access 
levels were necessary. 
Beside general items to handle data the user needs 
for his convinience special tools and utilities. For 
example: if the user wants further information on a 
special image, the program has to offer him a tool to 
achieve this informations easily. Furthermore he often 
need's utilities. For example when he need's to 
recreate a table or export datasets to different 
programs. 
The way the software developer implements those 
general requirements decides over the qualitiy of a 
program and the advantage forthe user. Even if there 
are a lot of rapid application development tools on the 
market which offer the developer to concentrate on 
the special requirements of a program, you often find 
so called "banana software" which is a synonym for 
software that mature by the customer through endless 
patches and fix packs. 
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Figure 1 
231 
2.2 Special Requirements 
Before you can handle data you have to analyze the 
process of getting data and the relationships between 
data of different kinds. 
When analyzing the process of taking 
photogrammetric images we found out that in general 
it follows an hierarchical order. 
For example: If you take photogrammteric pictures 
from a building a group of pictures represents a 
special part of the building. The complete set of 
pictures make up the building itself. If the building is 
part of a street which you have to analyze, then you 
get the hierarchical order shown below. 
    
Images Images Images 
Figure 2 
This hierarchical order determines the structure of the 
image database and it's tables. Furthermore it defines 
a special requirement because the image database 
program has to take care of this structure when it 
presents the data to the user. This means the user 
interface has to represent this structure in a 
hierarchical way. 
Another special requirement raised from the 
pretension to use the image database under CAD. 
The goal was to reference the images of the database 
by a camera symbol inside the CAD environment. If 
the user selects a camera symbol inside the drawing 
he can select the corresponding image by it's image 
number from the database. So he has the possibility 
to check the camera position inside his CAD drawing. 
Two major claims raise from this procedure. First of 
all the image number which corresponds to the 
camera symbol must be unique. Second, the camera 
position co-ordinates and the accuracy of this co- 
ordinates (approximate values, bundle adjustment, 
single image orientation) must be part of the image 
dataset. 
One more special requirement result's from 
visualization. If the user want's to map an image on a 
CAD model he needs the image coordinates from the