Natural Language For Database Retrieval- A Practical Perspective

An application is highlighted that introduced natural language to an organisation to replace a structured query language. Users were introduced to natural language while a parallel group of users was introduced to a structured query language. The exposure to natural language and the structured query language in parallel was done not as a strict scientific study. It was done as a means of introducing a natural language interrogation tool to the company. This does not detractfrom its usefulness because so little work has been done on natural language evaluation in a business environment (larke, Turner, Stohr, Vassiliou, White Michielson 1985, Krause 1979). This application involved users using natural language to solve real world problems as opposed to controlled laboratory experiments (Reisner 1977, Welty and Stemple 1981). The users of the natural language and the structured query language worked in the same open plan office environment. The new users of the natural language system were initially happy with it, but over a period of months began to migrate and preferred the structured query language tool.