Methods, apparatus, and data structures for annotating a database design schema and/or indexing annotations

• US 7,512,609 B2
• Filed: 07/22/2005
• Issued: 03/31/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/03/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: McConnell, Christopher Clayton
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam; Hosain T
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chempakaseril; Ann J
• Application Number:
  US11/188,058
• Publication Number:
  US 20050256889A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,348 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/20 of structured data, e.g. relational data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24522 Translation of natural language queries to structured queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/288 Entity relationship models
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/353 into predefined classes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90 Details of database functions independent of the retrieved data types
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99937 Sorting
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99953 Recoverability

Abstract

An authoring tool (or process) to facilitate the performance of an annotation function and an indexing function. The annotation function may generate informational annotations and word annotations to a database design schema (e.g., an entity-relationship diagram or “ERD”). The indexing function may analyze the words of the annotations by classifying the words in accordance with a concordance and dictionary, and assign a normalized weight to each word of each of the annotations based on the classification(s) of the word(s) of the annotation. A query translator (or query translation process) to (i) accept a natural language query from a user interface process, (ii) convert the natural language query to a formal command query (e.g., an SQL query) using the indexed annotations generated by the authoring tool and the database design schema, and (iii) present the formal command query to a database management process for interrogating the relational database.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method of indexing annotations to an information storage to generate a list of indexed annotations, the method comprising steps of:

a) classifying words of the annotations based on a concordance and a dictionary so that the words have an associated classification, wherein;

classifications comprise;

a unique classification, wherein the unique classification comprises;

possessives; and

words not in the dictionary;

a proper classification, wherein the proper classification comprises words defined as proper nouns in the dictionary;

a stop classification, wherein the stop classification comprises words having no semantic meaning;

a class classification, wherein the class classification comprises words that have been used to annotate rows in a table; and

at least four distinct classifications comprising words derived from frequency of each word in the concordance such that;

words occurring least frequently in the concordance comprise a rare classification;

words occurring next-least frequently in the concordance comprise an infrequent classification;

words occurring next-most frequently in the concordance comprise a frequent classification; and

words occurring most frequently in the concordance comprise a common classification; and

the step of classifying words includes determining the classification to which the words should be assigned; and

b) assigning a normalized weight to words of each annotation, based on the associated classification of the words of each annotation, wherein a total normalized weight for the words of each annotation is equal to 1.00,

wherein, the normalized weight assigned to words of each annotation based on the classifications associated with the words is determined by;

determining whether the annotation contains any words in the unique classification, wherein;

in an event that more than one word in the unique classification exists in the annotation, each of the unique classification words is assigned a normalized weight of 0.75 divided by the number of unique classification words in the annotation;

in an event that only one word in the unique classification exists in the annotation, that word is assigned a normalized weight of 0.50;

based on the number of words in the unique classification determining the weight to be apportioned to the remaining words occurs such that;

in an event that there are no unique words in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 1.00;

in an event that there was one unique word in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 0.50;

in an event that there was more than one unique word in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 0.25;

of the weight apportioned to the remaining words, determining a share of the apportioned weight for each word such that;

each word in the class classification gets 1 share of the remaining weight,

each word in the stop classification gets 1 share of the remaining weight,

each word in the common classification gets 2 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the frequent classification gets 3 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the infrequent classification gets 4 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the rare classification gets 5 shares of the remaining weight; and

each word in the proper classification gets 5 shares of the remaining weight,

in an event that the weight added together for number of shares of class, common, and stop words in the annotation is more than 0.10, setting the normalized weight for the class, common, and stop words to equal 0.10.

2. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein the step of classifying words is based on a degree to which the words are distinct.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 2 wherein more distinct words are weighted more heavily than less distinct words.

4. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein, in an annotation, words classified as “

unique”

share a fixed amount of a normalized weight, and remaining words of the annotation share a remaining amount of the normalized weight.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 4 wherein the remaining words of the annotation share the remaining amount of the normalized weight such that the more distinct a remaining word is, the larger its share of the remaining amount of the normalized weight.

10. A processor readable storage medium having processor executable instructions embodied thereon, the processor executable instructions which when executed facilitate performance of the method of claim 1.

6. A system for indexing annotations to information, the system comprising:

a processor for processing annotations to information via an annotating facility adapted to annotate a database design schema with annotations comprising;

word annotations; and

informational annotations;

a memory operatively coupled to the processor for storing annotations to information;

classification means for classifying words of the annotations based on a dictionary and a concordance such that each individual word of the words is associated with a classification, wherein;

classifications comprise;

a unique classification, wherein the unique classification comprises;

possessives; and

words not in the dictionary;

a proper classification, wherein the proper classification comprises words defined as proper nouns in the dictionary;

a stop classification, wherein the stop classification comprises words having no semantic meaning;

a class classification, wherein the class classification comprises words that have been used to annotate rows in a table; and

at least four distinct classifications comprising words derived from frequency of each word in the concordance such that;

words occurring least frequently in the concordance comprise a rare classification;

words occurring next-least frequently in the concordance comprise an infrequent classification;

words occurring next-most frequently in the concordance comprise a frequent classification; and

words occurring most frequently in the concordance comprise a common classification; and

the step of classifying words includes determining the classification to which the words should be assigned; and

assignment means for assigning a normalized weight to each individual word of the annotations responsive to the associated classification of each individual word by the classification means, wherein a total normalized weight for the words of each annotation is equal to 1.00, and the normalized weight assigned to words of each annotation based on the classifications associated with the words is determined by;

determining whether the annotation contains any words in the unique classification, wherein;

in an event that more than one word in the unique classification exists in the annotation, each of the unique classification words is assigned a normalized weight of 0.75 divided by the number of unique classification words in the annotation;

in an event that only one word in the unique classification exists in the annotation, that word is assigned a normalized weight of 0.50;

based on the number of words in the unique classification determining the weight to be apportioned to the remaining words occurs such that;

in an event that there are no unique words in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 1.00;

in an event that there was one unique word in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 0.50;

in an event that there was more than one unique word in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 0.25;

of the weight apportioned to the remaining words, determining a share of the apportioned weight for each word such that;

each word in the class classification gets 1 share of the remaining weight,

each word in the stop classification gets 1 share of the remaining weight,

each word in the common classification gets 2 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the frequent classification gets 3 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the infrequent classification gets 4 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the rare classification gets 5 shares of the remaining weight; and

each word in the proper classification gets 5 shares of the remaining weight,

in an event that the weight added together for number of shares of class, common, and stop words in the annotation is more than 0.10, setting the normalized weight for the class, common, and stop words to equal 0.10.

7. At least one machine readable storage medium storing processor-executable instructions, the processor-executable instructions comprising:

an annotating facility, the annotating facility adapted to annotate a database design schema with annotations comprising;

word annotations; and

informational annotations; and

an indexing facility, the indexing facility adapted to;

classify individual words of the word annotations based on a concordance and a dictionary such that the individual words of the word annotations are have an associated classification, wherein;

classifications comprise;

a unique classification, wherein the unique classification comprises;

possessives; and

words not in the dictionary;

a proper classification, wherein the proper classification comprises words defined as proper nouns in the dictionary;

a stop classification, wherein the stop classification comprises words having no semantic meaning;

a class classification, wherein the class classification comprises words that have been used to annotate rows in a table; and

at least four distinct classifications comprising words derived from frequency of each word in the concordance such that;

words occurring least frequently in the concordance comprise a rare classification;

words occurring next-least frequently in the concordance comprise an infrequent classification;

words occurring next-most frequently in the concordance comprise a frequent classification, and

words occurring most frequently in the concordance comprise a common classification; and

the step of classifying words includes determining the classification to which the words should be assigned; and

assign a normalized weight to the classified individual words of the word annotations, based on the associated classification of the words of each annotation, wherein a total normalized weight for the words of each annotation is equal to 1.00 and the normalized weight assigned to words of each annotation based on the classifications associated with the words is determined by;

determining whether the annotation contains any words in the unique classification, wherein;

in an event that more than one word in the unique classification exists in the annotation, each of the unique classification words is assigned a normalized weight of 0.75 divided by the number of unique classification words in the annotation;

in an event that only one word in the unique classification exists in the annotation, that word is assigned a normalized weight of 0.50;

based on the number of words in the unique classification determining the weight to be apportioned to the remaining words occurs such that;

in an event that there are no unique words in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 1.00;

in an event that there was one unique word in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 0.50;

in an event that there was more than one unique word in the annotation, the remaining weight to be apportioned is 0.25;

of the weight apportioned to the remaining words, determining a share of the apportioned weight for each word such that;

each word in the class classification gets 1 share of the remaining weight,

each word in the stop classification gets 1 share of the remaining weight,

each word in the common classification gets 2 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the frequent classification gets 3 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the infrequent classification gets 4 shares of the remaining weight,

each word in the rare classification gets 5 shares of the remaining weight; and

each word in the proper classification gets 5 shares of the remaining weight,

in an event that the weight added together for number of shares of class, common, and stop words in the annotation is more than 0.10, setting the normalized weight for the class, common, and stop words to equal 0.10.

8. The at least one machine readable storage medium storing processor-executable instructions of claim 7 wherein the word annotations include at least one of manually-generated word annotations and automatically-generated word annotations.

9. The at least one machine readable storage medium storing processor-executable instructions of claim 7 wherein:

word annotations facilitate attaching related words to tables, rows, columns, and relationships of the database design schema; and

informational annotations facilitate;

distinguishing tables corresponding to entities from tables corresponding to properties in a database to which the database design schema is applied;

attaching to rows of tables in the database, a probability that the row will be referenced; and

describing entities in a way that is meaningful to humans.