Methods, apparatus, and data structures for facilitating a natural language interface to stored information
US6993475B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | May 3, 2000 |
| Grant date | Jan 31, 2006 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 3, 2020 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
- CPC primaryY10S707/99936
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
An authoring tool (or process) to facilitate the performance of an annotation function and an indexing function. The annotation function may generate informational annotations and word annotations to a database design schema (e.g., an entity-relationship diagram or “ERD”). The indexing function may analyze the words of the annotations by classifying the words in accordance with a concordance and dictionary, and assign a normalized weight to each word of each of the annotations based on the classification(s) of the word(s) of the annotation.A query translator (or query translation process) to (i) accept a natural language query from a user interface process, (ii) convert the natural language query to a formal command query (e.g., an SQL query) using the indexed annotations generated by the authoring tool and the database design schema, and (iii) present the formal command query to a database management process for interrogating the relational database.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.