Method and apparatus for providing speech recognition resolution on a database

• US 20060271361A1
• Filed: 05/27/2005
• Published: 11/30/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/27/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Sprague, Kara Lynn, Vora, Ashish
• Granted Patent: US 7,752,048 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/231
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2448 for particular applications; for extensibility, e.g. user defined types
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24522 Translation of natural language queries to structured queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

Abstract

A method of providing speech recognition resolution in a database includes receiving an utterance from an end-user or application, and dispatching it to the database which is coupled to or has access to a speech recognition technology. The method further includes converting the utterance to an intermediate form suitable for searching, and transmitting the intermediate form from the database to the speech recognition technology. An item-matching is then performed via the speech recognition technology which returns items matching the utterance to the database along with a confidence metric, and the utterance matches are then provided from the database in the form of an ordered result set.

Claims

1. A method for providing speech recognition in a database, comprising:

receiving an utterance from an end-user or an input application;

dispatching the utterance to the database;

converting the utterance to an intermediate form suitable for searching;

transmitting the intermediate form from the database to a speech recognition technology;

performing item-matching via the speech recognition technology, and returning items matching the intermediate form to the database along with a confidence metric for each match; and

providing relevant utterance matches from the database in the form of an ordered result set.

2. The method as in claim 1 wherein the database is initialized by generating at least one shadow table associated with data in the database.

3. The method as in claim 2 wherein the dispatching step further comprises utilizing an SQL function having at least a representation of the utterance as an argument.

4. The method as in claim 1 wherein the speech recognition technology is large scale speech recognition technology.

5. The method as in claim 2 wherein selected data is identified in the database as data to be associated with a shadow table.

6. The method as in claim 2 wherein the items matching the intermediate forms are returned to the database as a graded shadow table.

7. A method for providing speech resolution in a database, the method comprising:

initializing the database by adding to the database shadow tables associated with voice-searchable data in the database including a transcription to searchable form of the voice searchable data and a link to the voice searchable data;

passing at least one shadow table from the database to a speech recognition technology for recognition matching; and

returning match results from the speech recognition technology to the database.

8. The method as in claim 7 further comprising maintaining the database by automatically updating the shadow tables in response to changes to the database.

9. The method as in claim 7 wherein the speech recognition technology is large scale speech recognition technology.

12. The method as in claim 7 further comprising providing a parameter in the database to flag data which is to be transcribed for a shadow table and linked thereto.

13. The method as in claim 7 wherein the returned match results are converted into an ordered result set by the database.

10. A system for providing speech recognition resolution within a database comprising:

means for receiving an utterance from an end-user or an input application;

means for dispatching the utterance to the database;

means for converting the utterance to an intermediate form suitable for searching;

means for performing item-matching via a speech recognition search algorithm, and returning items matching the utterance to the data base; and

means associated with the database for converting the items matching the utterance into an ordered result set.

11. The system as in claim 10 wherein the database further comprises means for initializing by generating at least one shadow table associated with data in the database.

14. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing a method for providing speech recognition in a database, the method comprising:

receiving an utterance from an end-user or an input application;

dispatching the utterance to the database coupled to a speech recognition technology;

converting the utterance to an intermediate form suitable for searching;

performing item-matching using the speech recognition technology, and returning items matching the utterance to the data base; and

returning relevant matches to the database in the form of an ordered result set for communication to the user.

15. The computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the method as in claim 14 wherein the speech recognition technology is a large scale speech recognition technology.

16. The computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the method as in claim 15 wherein the database is initialized by adding to the database at least one shadow table including a transcription of data in the database to a searchable form and a link to the corresponding data in the database.

17. The computer-readable medium as in claim 16 wherein the item matching is performed by the search recognition technology by matching the shadow table data to the intermediate form.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the dispatching step further comprises utilizing an SQL function having at least a representation of the utterance as an argument.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 further comprising updating the shadow table automatically in response to changes in the database.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the item matching compares the shadow table to the intermediate form of the utterance.