Natural language interfaces to databases – an introduction
Open accessAbstract
This paper is an introduction to natural language interfaces to databases (NLIDBS). A brief overview of the history of NLIDBS is first given. Some advantages and disadvantages of NLIDBS are then discussed, comparing NLIDBS to formal query languages, form-based interfaces, and graphical interfaces. An introduction to some of the linguistic problems NLIDBS have to confront follows, for the benefit of readers less familiar with computational linguistics. The discussion then moves on to NLIDB architectures, portability issues, restricted natural language input systems (including menu-based NLIDBS), and NLIDBS with reasoning capabilities. Some less explored areas of NLIDB research are then presented, namely database updates, meta-knowledge questions, temporal questions, and multi-modal NLIDBS. The paper ends with reflections on the current state of the art.
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E-learning and mental health represent relevant interaction contexts, which have also seen great prominence in recent publications.
“E-learning and mental health represent relevant interaction contexts, which have also seen great prominence in recent publications (Androutsopoulos et al., 1995; Chaves & Gerosa, 2021; Følstad & Skjuve, 2019; Hauswald et al., 2016).”
From Charting the Evolution and Future of Conversational Agents: A Research Agenda Along Five Waves and New Frontiers (2024) · cites this paper as Androutsopoulos et al., 1995
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- Authors
- Androutsopoulos, I., Ritchie, G. D., & Thanisch, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- ORCID
- Androutsopoulos, I.
- Venue
- Natural Language Engineering
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 1995-03
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 29-81
- ISSN
- 1351-3249 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8110
- OpenAlex
- W2145618437
- Cited by
- 768
- References
- 101
- Citations by year
- 2026: 27 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 41 · 2020: 49 · 2019: 39 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 32 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 25 · 2014: 29 · 2013: 30 · 2012: 31
- FWCI
- 10.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Natural Language Engineering (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- State Scholarships Foundation
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Natural Language Processing Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Speech and dialogue systems
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Advanced Database Systems and Queries
- Keywords
- natural language interfaces to databases, graphical user interface, linguistic challenges, database architecture, portability, menu-based interface, reasoning skills, database updates, multimodal interfaces
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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