Enhancing system usability with a natural language interface

Abstract

A Natural Language Interface (NLI) is studied and developed for retrieving the recorded domain information within a prototype system, which manages complex information within the paradigm of recording live interactive records of information so that the recorded information can be queried and replayed. After introducing the background of the prototype system, concrete querying examples are presented so as to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of using the developed NLI. This is done by comparing the natural language queries and the corresponding SQL statements, which are automatically gained within the prototype system. This paper shows that an NLI can greatly reduce the efforts for writing or understanding queries of information systems, thus can enhance the system usability. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.