Providing natural-language interface to repository

• US 20070130194A1
• Filed: 12/06/2005
• Published: 06/07/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Kaiser, Matthias
• Granted Patent: US 7,676,489 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3344 using natural language analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface

Abstract

Providing a natural-language interface to a repository includes retrieving information from at least one repository, and generating a computer-readable ontology using the information. The computer-readable ontology is configured for use in interpreting user-entered natural-language statements regarding the at least one repository. A computer system including at least one repository has an ontology-generating module generating a computer-readable ontology using information retrieved from the at least one repository. The ontology may be created in any or all of several forms, such as a separate entity, a pointer structure or an index.

Claims

1. A computer-program product tangibly embodied in an information carrier, the computer-program product comprising instructions that when executed cause a processor to perform operations for providing a natural-language interface to a repository, the operations comprising:

retrieving information from at least one repository; and

generating a computer-readable ontology using the information, the computer-readable ontology being configured for use in interpreting user-entered natural-language statements regarding the at least one repository.

2. The computer-program product of claim 1, wherein the information comprises metadata.

3. The computer-program product of claim 2, wherein the metadata is retrieved from a table in the repository, the metadata comprising a table name and at least one attribute included in the table.

4. The computer-program product of claim 3, wherein several attributes are retrieved from the table and wherein the computer-readable ontology upon being generated indicates an association between the several attributes.

5. The computer-program product of claim 1, wherein the information comprises at least one value associated with a property.

6. The computer-program product of claim 5, wherein the computer-readable ontology upon being generated indicates a data type of the at least one value.

7. The computer-program product of claim 5, wherein several values associated with the property are retrieved, and wherein the computer-readable ontology upon being generated indicates a range of the several values.

8. The computer-program product of claim 1, wherein the computer-readable ontology comprises a pointer structure associated with the repository.

9. The computer-program product of claim 1, wherein the computer-readable ontology comprises an index of the repository.

10. The computer-program product of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise interpreting a first user-entered natural-language statement regarding the at least one repository.

11. The computer-program product of claim 10, wherein interpretation comprises identifying, in the first user-entered natural-language statement, at least one attribute existing in the repository.

12. The computer-program product of claim 11, wherein the interpretation further comprises determining whether the first user-entered natural-language statement has a value associated with the attribute.

13. The computer-program product of claim 12, wherein the first user-entered natural-language statement has the value associated with the attribute, and wherein the operations further comprise using the value in a predefined operation.

14. The computer-program product of claim 12, wherein the first user-entered natural-language statement has no value associated with the attribute, and wherein the operations further comprise outputting a stored value for the attribute retrieved from the repository.

15. The computer-program product of claim 10, wherein interpretation comprises using at least one expression pattern.

16. A computer system comprising:

at least one repository; and

an ontology-generating module generating a computer-readable ontology using information retrieved from the at least one repository, the computer-readable ontology being configured for use by the computer system in interpreting user-entered natural-language statements regarding the at least one repository.

17. The computer system of claim 16, wherein the ontology-generating module retrieves metadata from a table in the repository and generates the computer-readable ontology to indicate an association between several attributes included in the metadata.

18. The computer system of claim 16, wherein the ontology-generating module retrieves several values from the repository associated with a property and generates the computer-readable ontology to indicate a range of the several values.

19. The computer system of claim 16, further comprising an interpreting module that uses the computer-readable ontology in interpreting a first user-entered natural-language statement regarding the at least one repository.

20. The computer system of claim 19, wherein the interpreting module:

(a) determines whether the first user-entered natural-language statement has a value associated with an attribute;

(b) causes a predefined operation using the value to be performed upon determining that the first user-entered natural-language statement has the value associated with the attribute; and

(c) causes a stored value for the attribute retrieved from the repository to be output upon determining that the first user-entered natural-language statement has no value associated with the attribute.