Issues in the Syntactic Parsing of Queries for a Natural Language Interface to Databases

Abstract

In this chapter, an exhaustive parser is presented. The parser was developed to be used in a natural language interface to databases (NLIDB) project. This chapter includes a brief description of state-of-the-art NLIDBs, including a description of the methods used and the performance of some interfaces. Some of the general problems in natural language interfaces to databases are also explained. The exhaustive parser was developed, aiming at improving the overall performance of the interface; therefore, the interface is also briefly described. This chapter also presents the drawbacks discovered during the experimental tests of the parser, which show that it is unsuitable for improving the NLIDB performance.