Prose feedback in information access system

• US 7,243,095 B2
• Filed: 11/06/2003
• Issued: 07/10/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 05/02/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Lau, Raymond, Chang, Jane Wen, McCandless, Michael Kyle
• Primary Examiner(s): Lewis; Cheryl
• Application Number:
  US10/704,225
• Publication Number:
  US 20040133603A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,342 Days
• Field of Search: 707 2- 5, 707/100, 705/853, 704/9, 704/89, 715/513, 715526-529, 715/760
• US Class Current: 704/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24522 Translation of natural language queries to structured queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24575 using context
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/56 Natural language generation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/917 Text
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/959 Network
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

A method of generating prose in response to a query includes generating a text frame from the query and processing the text frame in conjunction with grammar rules to produce a prose rendition of the query.

Claims

1. A network comprising:

a client computing system having a central processing unit (CPU), a memory, an input/output (I/O) device;

a server computing system having a CPU and memory, memory including a prose rendition process; and

the memory of the client computing system including a plug-in that, in response to a query received through the I/O device, causes the prose rendition process to generate a text frame and process the text frame in conjunction with grammar rules to produce a prose rendition of the query.

2. The network of claim 1 wherein the text frame comprises a data structure, the data structure representing an expanded query, the expanded query representing different elements of the query and different criteria of the query.

3. The network of claim 2 wherein the data structure comprises rows, each of the rows having a key, the key identifying information in each of the rows.

4. The network of claim 3 wherein the data structure further comprises a plurality of data structures.

5. The network of claim 4 wherein the grammar rules are natural language rules.

6. The network of claim 4 wherein the grammar rules are English.

7. The network of claim 4 wherein generating the text frame further comprises encapsulating the processed text frame in a markup language.

8. The network of claim 7 wherein the markup language is extensible markup language (XML).

9. The network of claim 7 wherein the markup language is hypertext markup language (HTML).

10. The network of claim 1 wherein processing the text frame comprises matching the text frame to the grammar rules.

11. An apparatus comprising:

an input/output (I/O) device;

a storage device;

a central processing unit (CPU); and

a memory including a process to generate a text frame from a query received from the I/O device, load grammar rules from the storage device, and process the text frame in conjunction with the grammar rules to produce a prose rendition of the query.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the text frame comprises a data structure, the data structure representing an expanded query, the expanded query representing different elements of the query and different criteria of the query.

13. The apparatus of claim 12 wherein the data structure comprises rows, each of the rows having a key, the key identifying information in each of the rows.

14. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the data structure comprises a plurality of data structures.

15. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the grammar rules are natural language rules.

16. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the grammar rules are English.

17. The apparatus of claim of 11 wherein generating the text frame further comprises encapsulating the processed text frame in a markup language.

18. The apparatus of claim 17 wherein the markup language is extensible markup language (XML).

19. The apparatus of claim 17 wherein the markup language is hypertext markup language (HTML).

20. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein processing further comprises:

matching content residing in a database to the text frame; and

associating the matched content with the prose rendition.

21. The apparatus of claim 20 wherein the database resides in a server in a network.

22. The method of claim 20 wherein the matched content is a search result summary.