Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:21:09.657Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Natural language interfaces to databases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Ann Copestake  and
Karen Sparck Jones
Ann Copestake
Affiliation:
Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, UK
Karen Sparck Jones
Affiliation:
Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper reviews the current state of the art in natural language access to databases. This has been a long-standing area of work in natural language processing. But though some commercial systems are now available, providing front ends has proved much harder than was expected, and the necessary limitations on front ends have to be recognized. The paper discusses the issues, both general to language and task-specific, involved in front end design, and the way these have been addressed, concentrating on the work of the last decade. The focus is on the central process of translating a natural language question into a database query, but other supporting functions are also covered. The points are illustrated by the use of a single example application. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the current state, indicating that future progress will depend on the one hand on general advances in natural language processing, and on the other on expanding the capabilities of traditional databases.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Knowledge Engineering Review , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 225 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, J, 1987. Natural Language Processing. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.Google Scholar
Alshawi, H et al. , 1989. Research Programme in Natural Language Processing, Final Report. Cambridge: SRI Cambridge Computer Science Research Centre.Google Scholar
Alshawi, H, 1989. “Analysing the dictionary definitions”. In: Boguraev, B and Briscoe, T (eds.), Computational Lexicography for Natural Language Processing, pp 153–169. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ballard, B and Stumberger, D, 1986. “Semantic acquisition in TELI”. Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 20–29. New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, M, Moser, MG and Stallard, D, 1986. “The IRUS transportable natural language database interface. In: Kerschberg, L (ed.), Expert Database Systems, pp 617–630. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.Google Scholar
Bates, M and Weischedel, R, 1987. Tutorial: Evaluating Natural Language Interfaces. 25th Annual Meeting of the ACL, Stanford CA. Cambridge, MA: Bolt, Berank and Newman.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binot, JL et al. , 1988. LOKI: A Logic Oriented Approach to Data and Knowledge Bases Supporting Natural Language Interaction. London: Scicon Ltd.Google Scholar
Bobrow, RJ, Resnik, P and Weischedel, RM, 1990. “Multiple underlying systems: translating user requests into programs to produce answers”. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 227–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boguraev, BK and Sparck Jones, K, 1982. “How to drive a database front end using general semantic information”. Proceedings of the Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, pp 81–88. Santa Monica CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boguraev, BK and Sparck Jones, K, 1984. “A natural language front end to databases with evaluative feedback”. In: Gardarin, G and Gelenbe, E (eds.), New Applications of Databases, pp 159–183. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Brachman, RJ, Gilbert, VP and Levesque, HJ, 1985. “An essential hybrid reasoning system: knowledge and symbol level accounts of KRYPTON”. Proceedings of the 9th IJCAI, pp 532–539. Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Brennan, SE, 1988. “The multi-media articulation of answers in a natural language database query system”. Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, pp 1–8. Austin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodie, ML and Mylopolous, J, 1988. Readings in Artificial Intelligence and Databases. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Bronnenberg, WJHJ et al. , 1980. “The question answering system PHLIQAI”. In: Bolc, L (ed.), Natural Language Question Answering Systems, pp 217–305. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Carbonell, JG, 1983. “Discourse pragmatics and ellipsis resolution intask-oriented natural language interfaces”. Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 164–168. Cambridge, MA: MIT.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, J and Grover, C, 1989. “The derivation of a large computational lexicon for English from LDOCE”. In: Boguraev, B and Briscoe, T (eds.), Computational Lexicography for Natural Language Processing, pp 117–133. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Clifford, J, 1988. “Natural language querying of historical databases”. Computational Linguistics 14(4) 10–34.Google Scholar
Codd, EF et al. , 1978. RENDEZVOUS Version 1: An Experimental English-Language Query Formulation System for Casual Users of Relational Databases. Research Report RJ2144. San José, CA: IBM Research Laboratory.Google Scholar
Copestake, AA and Sparck Jones, K, 1989. Inference in Natural Language Front Ends to Databases. Technical Report 163. University of Cambridge: Computer Laboratory.Google Scholar
Damerau, F, 1980. The Transformational Question Answering (TQA) System: Description, Operating Experience and Implications. Report RC8287. Yorktown Heights, NY: IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center.Google Scholar
Damerau, F, 1981. “Operating statistics for the transformational question answering system”. American Journal of Computational Linguistics 7 30–42.Google Scholar
Date, CJ, 1983. An Introduction to Database Systems: Vol. 2. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Davidson, J and Kaplan, SJ, 1983. “Natural language access to databases: Interpreting update requests”. American Journal of Computational Linguistics 9 57–68.Google Scholar
Frost, DP, 1989. “The design of a natural language interface for medical expert systems”. PhD thesis, University of London (University College and Middlesex School of Medicine.Google Scholar
Gazdar, G and Mellish, C, 1989. Natural Language Processing in LISP. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Ginsparg, J, 1983. “A robust portable natural language database interface”. Proceedings of the Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, pp 25–31. Santa Monica, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, B et al. , 1961. “BASEBALL: An automatic question answerer”. Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference 19 219–224; reprinted in Grosz, Sparck Jones and Webber (1986) pp 545–549.Google Scholar
Grosz, B, Sparck Jones, K and Webber, BL (eds.), 1986. Readings in Natural Language Processing. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.Google Scholar
Grosz, B et al. , 1987. “TEAM: an experiment in the design of transportable natural-language interfaces”. Artificial Intelligence 12 173–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grover, C et al. , 1989. The Alvey Natural Language Tools Grammar (second release). Technical Report 162. University of Cambridge: Computer Laboratory.Google Scholar
Haas, N and Hendrix, GG, 1983. “Learning without being told: Acquiring knowledge for information management”. In: Michalski, RS, Carbonell, JG and Mitchell, TM (eds.), Machine Learning, pp 405–427. Palo Alto, CA: Tioga Publishing.Google Scholar
Hafner, CD, 1985. “Semantics of temporal data and temporal queries”. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 1–8. Chicage, IL.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, LR, 1977. “User oriented database query with the ROBOT natural language query system”. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 9 697–713.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, LR, 1984. “Experience with INTELLECT: Artificial intelligence technology transfer”. The AI Magazine 5(2) 43–50.Google Scholar
Hendrix, GG, et al., 1978. “Developing a natural language interface to complex data”. ACM Transactions on Database Systems 3 105–147; reprinted in Grosz, Sparck Jones and Webber (1986) pp 563–584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirst, G, 1987. Semantic Interpretation and the Resolution of Ambiguity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobbs, JR and Martin, P, 1987. “Semantics of temporal data and temporal queries”. Proceedings of the 10th IJCAI, pp 520–523. Karlsruhe, West Germany.Google Scholar
Jarke, M, 1986. “Control of search and knowledge acquisition in large-scale KBMS”. In: Brodie, ML and Mylopolous, J (eds.), On Knowledge Base Management Systems, pp 507–522. New York: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalita, JK, Jones, ML and McCalla, GI, 1986. “Summarising natural language database responses”. Computational Linguistics 12 107–124.Google Scholar
Kaplan, SJ, Mays, E and Joshi, AK, 1980. A Technique for Managing the Lexicon in a Natural Language Interface to a Changing Database. Technical Report MS-CIS-80–10. University of Pennsylvania: Department of Computer and Information Science.Google Scholar
Kaplan, SJ, 1982. “Cooperative responses from a portable natural language query system”. Artificial Intelligence 19 165–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, W, 1978. Data and Reality. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
King, JL, 1981. “QUIST: A system for semantic query optimization in relational databases”. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Very Large Databases, pp 510–517. Cannes, France.Google Scholar
Konolige, K, 1979. A Framework for a Portable Natural-language Interface to Large Databases. Technical Note 197. SRI International.Google Scholar
Konolige, K, 1981. The Database as Model: A Metatheoretic Approach. Technical Note 255. SRI International.Google Scholar
Manferdelli, JL, 1989. “Natural languages”. Sun Technology, Summer 1989, 122–129.Google Scholar
McKeown, KR, 1983. “Paraphrasing questions using given and new information”. American Journal of Computational Linguistics 9 1–10.Google Scholar
McKeown, KR, 1985. Text Generation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Means, LG, 1988. “Cn yur cmputr raed ths”. Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, pp 93–100. Austin, Texas.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellish, CS, 1989. “Some chart-based techniques for parsing ill-formed input”. Proceedings of the 27th ACL, pp 102–109. Vancouver.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, RC et al. , 1982. “Panel: Natural language access to databases—theoretical/technical issues”. Proceedings of the 20th ACL, pp 44–66, 169–171. Toronto.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueckstein, E-MM, 1983. “Q-TRANS: Query translation into English”. Proceedings of the 8th IJCAI, pp 660–662. Karlsruhe, West Germany.Google Scholar
Perrault, CR and Grosz, BJ, 1986. “Natural language interfaces”. Annual Review of Computer Science 1 47–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proctor, C and Young, S, 1987. “Dialogue control in conversational speech interfaces”. In: Taylor, MM, Néel, F and Bouwhuis, DG (eds.), The Structure of Multimodal Dialogue. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Reiter, R et al. , 1983. “A panel on AI and databases”. Proceedings of the 8th IJCAI, pp 1199–1206. Karlsruhe, West Germany.Google Scholar
Salveter, S and Maier, D, 1982. “Natural language database updates”. Proceedings of the 20th Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 67–73. Toronto.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scha, RJH, 1983. “Logical foundations for question answering”. PhD thesis.Google Scholar
Sondheimer, NK et al. , 1981. “Panel: Evaluation of natural language front ends to databases”. Proceedings of the 19th ACL, pp 29–42. Stanford, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparck Jones, K et al. , 1984. “Panel: Natural language and databases, again”. Proceedings of the COLING 84, 10th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, 22nd Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 182–193. Stanford, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparck Jones, K and Tait, JI, 1984. “Linguistically motivated descriptive term selection”. Proceedings of the COLING 84, 10th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, 22nd Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 287–290. Stanford, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparck Jones, K, 1988. A Note on Robustness in Front Ends. University of Cambridge: Computer Laboratory.Google Scholar
Stallard, DG, 1986. “A terminological simplification transformation for natural language question answering systems”. Proceedings of the 24th ACL, pp 241–246. New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stenton, SP, 1987. “Dialogue management for co-operative knowledge based systems”. The Knowledge Engineering Review 2 99–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Storrs, G, du Boulay, B and Gray, PMD, 1985. A Metadata Advisor: Some Sample Queries. University of Aberdeen: Department of Computer Science.Google Scholar
Tennant, H, 1981. Natural Language Processing. New York: Petrocelli.Google Scholar
Tennant, H et al. , 1983. “Menu-based natural language understanding”. Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 151–158. Cambridge, MA: MIT.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomita, M, 1985. “An efficient context-free parsing algorithm for natural languages”. Proceedings of the 9th IJCAI, pp 756–764. Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Wahlster, W, 1989. “User and discourse models for multimodal communication”. Proceedings of the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories 1989 European Scientific Symposium, pp 115–131. Paris.Google Scholar
Waltz, DL, 1978. “An English language question answering system for a large relational database”. Communications of the ACM 21 526–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, D and Pereira, F, 1982. “An efficient easily adaptable system for interpreting natural language queries”. American Journal of Computational Linguistics 8 110–122.Google Scholar
Webber, BL, 1986. “Questions, answers and responses: Interacting with knowledge base systems”. In: Brodie, ML and Mylopolous, J (eds.), On Knowledge Base Management Systems, pp 365–402. New York: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weischedel, RM, 1989. “A hybrid approach to representation in the JANUS natural language processor”. Proceedings of the 27th ACL, pp 193–202. Vancouver, British Columbia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whittaker, S and Stenton, P, 1989. “User studies and the design of natural language systems”. Proceedings of the 4th EACL, pp 116–123. Manchester.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilks, Y et al. , 1989. “A tractable machine dictionary as a resource for computational semantics”. In: Boguraev, B and Briscoe, T (eds.), Computational Lexicography for Natural Language Processing, pp 193–228. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Woods, W, 1972. The Lunar Sciences Natural Language Information System. Final Report. Cambridge, MA: Bolt, Beranek and Newman.Google Scholar
Woods, W, 1978. “Semantics and quantification in natural language question answering”. In: Yovits, M (ed.), Advances in Computers, pp 1–87. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Young, SJ, 1989. Final Report: Alvey/SERC Project MMI003, Voice Operated Database Inquiry Systems, Speech Input. University of Cambridge: Engineering Department.Google Scholar