. This paper compares graph-oriented with tabular representations in the context of database editors and argues that displaying data in tables is to be preferred on the instance level. In particular, nested tables are advocated and design and user interaction issues for a database editor based on this complex object data model are described. This then leads to the concept of spatial cursors which serve a variety of purposes. The argument is supported with illustrations taken from a running prototype named ESCHER. 1 Introduction The need for visual user interfaces to databases has grown in parallel with the development and general availability of graphical user interfaces. The relative importance of suitable user interfaces for the database community was recently pointed out by leading researchers in the field [Sto+93]. Indeed, the last years have seen the development of a number of editors and browsers for databases (cf. [BCCL91] and [ACM92] for references and a survey). Some editors ...