A natural language interface to a multiple databased office information system

Abstract

As an organization grows through mergers and acquisitions and through the integration of independently designed information sub-systems, it could find itself faced with a collection of databases implemented on heterogeneous database management systems. This paper presents a system to provide integrated access to multiple, independently designed databases through a portable natural language front-end and a multiple database access system back-end.The overall system is divided into a natural language interface (NLI) front-end and a multiple database access system (MDAS) back-end. The MDAS integrates the various conceptual views into a single global external schema. In a prototype of the overall system, the NLI will accept a natural language query and produce a relational calculus query expression over a global external schema. The MDAS will construct the response to the query by accessing the separate constituent databases through the local database management systems (DBMS's).