Word-containing database accessing system for responding to ambiguous queries, including a dictionary of database words, a dictionary searcher and a database searcher
First Claim
1. A database accessing system for processing a database query, the database including a multiplicity of entries each of which comprises at least first and second words, the database query including a sequence of at least first and second inputs corresponding to said first and second words respectively, each input including a plurality of input elements, the system including:
- a dictionary of all words in said database, including, for each word, a spelled representation of the word and a phonetic representation of the word;
an input element interpreter operative to convert each of said at least first and second inputs into a representation of a plurality of strings of symbol-probability pairs, each symbol-probability pair including a symbol which is a possible interpretation of an individual input element and an estimated probability of said input element having said possible interpretation;
a trigram stochastic evaluator operative to select high-probability strings from among said plurality of strings in said graph based at least partly on the frequency with which trigrams of symbols within said strings appear in said database;
a dictionary searcher operative, for each individual high-probability string, to search said dictionary for words whose phonetic representation is similar, relative to a predetermined similarity threshold, to a phonetic representation of said individual high-probability string and to assign to each found word a similarity value quantifying the degree to which the found word phonetically resembles the individual high-probability string; and
an entry similarity evaluator operative to identify a subset of entries in the database, based on output from said dictionary searcher, and, for each individual entry in said subset, to evaluate the similarity of said entry as a whole to said database query by combining the similarity values representing similarity of the words within said individual entry to the corresponding inputs within said database query.
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Abstract
A database accessing system for processing a request to access a database including a multiplicity of entries, each entry including at least one word, the request including a sequence of representations of possibly erroneous user inputs, the system including a similar word finder operative, for at least one interpretation of each representation, to find at least one database word which is at least similar to that interpretation, and a database entry evaluator operative, for each database word found by the similar word finder, to assign similarity values for relevant entries in the database, said values representing the degree of similarity between each database entry and the request.
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Citations
16 Claims
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1. A database accessing system for processing a database query, the database including a multiplicity of entries each of which comprises at least first and second words, the database query including a sequence of at least first and second inputs corresponding to said first and second words respectively, each input including a plurality of input elements, the system including:
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a dictionary of all words in said database, including, for each word, a spelled representation of the word and a phonetic representation of the word; an input element interpreter operative to convert each of said at least first and second inputs into a representation of a plurality of strings of symbol-probability pairs, each symbol-probability pair including a symbol which is a possible interpretation of an individual input element and an estimated probability of said input element having said possible interpretation; a trigram stochastic evaluator operative to select high-probability strings from among said plurality of strings in said graph based at least partly on the frequency with which trigrams of symbols within said strings appear in said database; a dictionary searcher operative, for each individual high-probability string, to search said dictionary for words whose phonetic representation is similar, relative to a predetermined similarity threshold, to a phonetic representation of said individual high-probability string and to assign to each found word a similarity value quantifying the degree to which the found word phonetically resembles the individual high-probability string; and an entry similarity evaluator operative to identify a subset of entries in the database, based on output from said dictionary searcher, and, for each individual entry in said subset, to evaluate the similarity of said entry as a whole to said database query by combining the similarity values representing similarity of the words within said individual entry to the corresponding inputs within said database query. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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Specification