Extending the E-R concepts to capture natural language semantics for database access

Abstract

Research on accessing databases in natural language usually employs an intermediate form for the mapping process from natural language to database languages. However, much effort is needed to bridge the gap between the existing intermediate forms and the database languages. In this paper, we extend the E-R concepts to capture the natural language semantics and develop a logical form to represent the natural language queries. The logical form can be efficiently transformed into relational algebra for query execution. The whole process provides a clear and natural framework for processing natural language queries to retrieve data from database systems.