Production of role related information from free text sources utilizing thematic caseframes

• US 20040167886A1
• Filed: 12/05/2003
• Published: 08/26/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Attensity Corporation (Attensity Group Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Attensity Corporation (Attensity Group Incorporated)
• Inventors: Bean, David L., Wakefield, Todd D.
• Application Number:
  US10/729,878
• Publication Number:
  US 20040167886A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/30 of unstructured textual data document management systems G06F16/93
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing

Abstract

Disclosed herein are systems, methods and products for interpreting and structuring free text records utilizing extractions of several types including syntactic, role, thematic and domain extractions. Also disclosed herein are systems, methods and products for integrating interpretive extractions with structured data into unified structures that can be analyzed with, among other tools, data mining and data visualization tools.

Claims

1. A computer program product located to one or more storage media devices usable to produce structured data from unstructured free text, said computer program product comprising instructions executable by a computer to perform the functions of:

accessing a source of unstructured data, the unstructured data including free text;

identifying text records within the free text;

linguistically parsing the identified text records;

identifying roles within the parsed text records, said identifying producing attribute extractions, each of said attribute extractions containing role information of the derived source text;

applying caseframes to the attribute extractions, said applying caseframes producing a filtered set of attribute extractions; and

producing a structured data element containing the filtered set of extractions.

2. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of identifying domains of the filtered set of attribute extractions.

3. A computer program product according to claim 2, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of the assignment of domain roles.

4. A computer program product according to claim 3, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of producing relation types.

5. A computer program product according to claim 4, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of coalescing the produced relation types.

6. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of creating a new database containing the structured data element produced in said producing.

7. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable to produce a new relational database containing the structured data element produced in said producing a structured data element.

8. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of producing a file containing the structured data element produced in said producing a structured data element.

9. A computer program product according to claim 5, wherein the instructions are further executable to produce a file having a format containing the structured data element selected from the group of XML, character separated values, spreadsheet formats and file-based database structures.

10. A computer system including a computer program product according to claim 1, further comprising:

a processing unit coupled to said one or more storage media devices, said processing unit being capable of executing said instructions; and

an execution command unit, whereby operation of said instructions and said processing unit may be commanded or controlled.

11. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein the structured data element produced by the performance of said producing includes reference information to the original free text for construed data.

12. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable to construct a library containing extracted attributes.

13. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable to construct a library containing extracted relational facts.

14. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of combining like relation types.

15. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of combining like attributes.

16. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of coalescing the identified attributes.

17. A computer program product according to claim 1, wherein said instructions are further executable to perform the function of coalescing identified relational facts.

18. A method for producing structured data from unstructured free text, comprising the steps of:

accessing a source of unstructured data, the unstructured data including free text;

identifying text records within the free text;

parsing the identified text records;

identifying roles within the parsed text records, said identifying producing attribute extractions, each of said attribute extractions containing role information of the derived source text;

applying caseframes to the attribute extractions, said applying caseframes producing a filtered set of attribute extractions; and

producing a structured data element containing the filtered set of extractions.

19. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of identifying domains of the filtered set of attribute extractions.

20. A method according to claim 19, further comprising the step of assigning domain roles.

21. A method according to claim 20, further comprising the step of producing relation types.

22. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of creating a new database containing the structured data element produced in said producing.

23. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of producing a new relational database containing the structured data element produced in said producing a structured data element.

24. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of producing a file containing the structured data element produced in said producing a structured data element.

25. A method according to claim 24, a file is produced having a format containing the structured data element selected from the group of XML, character separated values, spreadsheet formats and file-based database structures.

26. A method according to claim 18, wherein the structured data element produced by the performance of said producing includes reference information to the original free text for construed data.

27. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of constructing a library containing extracted attributes.

28. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of constructing a library containing extracted relational facts.

29. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of combining like relation types.

30. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of combining like attributes.

31. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of coalescing the identified attributes.

32. A method according to claim 18, further comprising the step of coalescing identified relation types.