Design of a natural language front-end to a relational database
Abstract
The need for Natural Language Interfaces to Databases (NLIDB) has become
increasing acute as more and more people access information stored in databases.
However, getting better database querying skills can involve a significant investment
of time especially for laymen.
The purpose of this project was to research on both the theoretical and
implementation of Natural Language Interfaces to Databases. It analyses how
syntactic knowledge can be mapped to the corresponding SQL. Several parsing
techniques have been explored with much emphasis on top down parsing using
recursive descent algorithm.
A system has been developed in PerI to be database and platform independent with a
graphical user interface implemented using PerI Tk. The system uses
Parse: :Rec Descent module to build the underlying parser, which is used to translate
natural language queries to SQL statements. It has also the ability to learn new
grammar. The system has been tested on library domain knowledge, and has been
able to translate natural language input to SQL based on SELECT commands.
Extending the grammar and translating non-select commands have been given as
recommendations for future work.
Citation
Master of Science in Information SystemsSponsorhip
University of NairobiPublisher
School of computing and informatics University of Nairobi