MASQUE/SQL: an efficient and portable natural language query interface for relational databases

Abstract

Masque is a powerful and portable natural language front-end for Prolog databases. It answers written English questions by generating Prolog queries, which are evaluated against the Prolog database. This paper describes a modified version of Masque, called Masque/sql, which answers English questions by generating and executing SQL code. Masque/sql maintains the full linguistic coverage of the original Masque, and can be used with any database system supporting SQL. Masque/sql is efficient, and can be easily configured using the built-in domaineditor. 2 Introduction Masque (Modular Answering System for QUeries in English) is a natural language The present paper appears in the "Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems", Edinburgh, 1993, proceedings published by Gordon and Breach Publishers Inc., Langhorne, PA, U.S.A. query interface for databases, developed at the Artificial Intelligen...