System and method for the transformation and canonicalization of semantically structured data

• US 7,676,500 B2
• Filed: 10/23/2006
• Issued: 03/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: AOL Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kominek, John Michael, Carriere, Steven Jeromy, Woods, Steven Gregory
• Primary Examiner(s): Woo; Isaac M
• Application Number:
  US11/552,126
• Publication Number:
  US 20070050413A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,233 Days
• Field of Search: 707 1- 10, 707100-1041, 707200-206
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 17/00 Digital computing or data processing equipment or methods, specially adapted for specific functions information retrieval, database structures or file system structures therefor G06F16/00
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1815 Semantic context, e.g. disambiguation of the recognition hypotheses based on word meaning
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4878 Advertisement messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4938 comprising a voice browser which renders and interprets, e.g. VoiceXML
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

A method of transforming and canonicalizing semantically structured data includes obtaining data from a network of computers, applying text patterns to the obtained data and placing the data in a first data file, providing a second data file containing the obtained data in a uniform format, and generating interface specific sentences from the data in the second data file.

Claims

1. A method for taking data from one format to any of a variety of interface dependent formats, comprising:

retrieving computer-executable instructions from computer memory;

executing the computer-executable instructions on at least one computer processing unit, thereby causing computer hardware to perform operations comprising;

obtaining data from a network of computers;

creating a first data file with the obtained data in a searchable first format by performing operations comprising;

applying a first set of rules comprising term substitution rules to the obtained data; and

applying a second set of rules comprising term rearrangement rules to the obtained data, wherein said first data file is in a transformed, rearranged and semantically structured format according to the first format; and

generating grammatical phrases from the first data file according to a canonical structure, the generated grammatical phrases being in a second format associated with a specific user interface.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein executing computer computer-executable instructions on the at least one computer processing unit causes the computer hardware to perform operations further comprising communicating voice output corresponding to the generated grammatical phrases.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein executing computer computer-executable instructions on the at least one computer processing unit causes the computer hardware to perform operations further comprising receiving voice input from a user and generating voice output corresponding to a select one of the grammatical phrases which is selected in response to the voice input.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein executing computer computer-executable instructions on the at least one computer processing unit causes the computer hardware to perform operations further comprising storing the first data file and the generated grammatical phrases in a database.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining data from a network of computers comprises obtaining data from the Internet.

6. A system for taking data from one format to any of a variety of interface dependent formats, the system comprising:

at least one computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions;

computer hardware comprising at least one processing unit configured to retrieve and execute computer-readable instructions stored in the computer readable medium, wherein execution of the instructions causes the computer hardware to perform operations comprising;

obtaining data from a network of computers;

creating a first data file with the obtained data in a searchable first format, the creating comprising;

applying a first set of rules comprising term substitution rules to the obtained data; and

applying a second set of rules to the obtained data, the second set of rules comprising term rearrangement rules, wherein said first data file is in a transformed, rearranged and semantically structured format according to the first format; and

generating grammatical phrases from the first data file according to a canonical structure, the generated grammatical phrases being in a second format associated with a specific user interface.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein execution of the instructions causes the computer hardware to perform operations further comprising communicating the generated grammatical phrases by voice to a remote communication device.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the remote communication device is a telephone.

9. The system of claim 6, wherein generating grammatical phrases from the obtained data comprises generating wireless application protocol (WAP) phrases.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein execution of the instructions causes the computer hardware to perform operations further comprising communicating WAP phrases to a WAP communication device.

11. The system of claim 6, wherein execution of the instructions causes the computer hardware to perform operations further comprising organizing a plurality of data files containing the obtained data.

12. A computer program product for taking data from one format to any of a variety of interface dependent formats, comprising:

at least one computer-readable medium storing executable instructions executable by computer hardware to perform operations comprising;

obtaining data from a network of computers;

creating a first data file with the obtained data in a searchable first format by performing operations comprising;

applying a first set of rules comprising term substitution rules to the obtained data; and

applying a second set of rules comprising term rearrangement rules to the obtained data, wherein said first data file is in a transformed, rearranged and semantically structured format according to the first format; and

generating grammatical phrases from the first data file according to a canonical structure, the generated grammatical phrases being in a second format associated with a specific user interface.

13. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the executable instructions are executable to perform operations further comprising providing voice output corresponding to the generated grammatical phrases.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the executable instructions are executable to perform operations further comprising communicating the voice output to a telephone.

15. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the executable instructions are executable to perform operations further comprising organizing a plurality of data files containing obtained data in the first format.

16. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the first format comprises a normalized and tagged format.

17. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the generated grammatical phrases are in a web related format.