A portable natural language interface
نویسنده
چکیده
A natural language interface allows database system users to input a query in a natural language such as English or French rather than in a formal query language. Such interfaces could also provide for natural language updates, but this paper deals only with queries. The goal of a natural language interface is to permit users to express their information needs in their own language and in conceptual terms particular to their understanding of the database application domain. Users also are freed from knowing about database management systems (DBMS), data models and database schemas. Allowing a user to access a database using natural language shifts onto the computer system (the interface and the DBMS) the burden of mediating between two views of data: the way in which the data is stored (the database view) and the way in which an end user thinks about it (the user's view). A DBMS, particularly a relational one, accomplishes part of this task. The interface must reconcile the user's view with the DBMS' view. To achieve such data independence, the interface must incorporate a considerable amount of knowledge including knowledge about natural language, the domain database application, and DBMSs and their query languages. *This work was supported in part by a contract from the Canadian Workplace Automation Research Center of the Department df Communication, Government of Canada.
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