{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,25]],"date-time":"2026-02-25T13:02:09Z","timestamp":1772024529060,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":77,"publisher":"Maximum Academic Press","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2009,7,7]],"date-time":"2009-07-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1246924800000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":6793,"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/terms"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["The Knowledge Engineering Review"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[1990,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>This paper reviews the current state of the art in natural language access to databases. This has been a long-standing area of work in natural language processing. But though some commercial systems are now available, providing front ends has proved much harder than was expected, and the necessary limitations on front ends have to be recognized. The paper discusses the issues, both general to language and task-specific, involved in front end design, and the way these have been addressed, concentrating on the work of the last decade. The focus is on the central process of translating a natural language question into a database query, but other supporting functions are also covered. The points are illustrated by the use of a single example application. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the current state, indicating that future progress will depend on the one hand on general advances in natural language processing, and on the other on expanding the capabilities of traditional databases.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1017\/s0269888900005476","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2009,7,7]],"date-time":"2009-07-07T09:35:30Z","timestamp":1246959330000},"page":"225-249","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":62,"title":["Natural language interfaces to databases"],"prefix":"10.48130","volume":"5","author":[{"given":"Ann","family":"Copestake","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Karen Sparck","family":"Jones","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"27968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2009,7,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref042","volume-title":"Data and Reality","author":"Kent","year":"1978"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref001","volume-title":"Natural Language Processing","author":"Allen","year":"1987"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref055","unstructured":"Reiter R , 1983. \u201cA panel on AI and databases\u201d. Proceedings of the 8th IJCAI, pp 1199\u20131206. Karlsruhe, West Germany."},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref035","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/320251.320253"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref045","unstructured":"Konolige K , 1981. The Database as Model: A Metatheoretic Approach. Technical Note 255. SRI International."},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref032","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hafner CD , 1985. \u201cSemantics of temporal data and temporal queries\u201d. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 1\u20138. Chicage, IL.","DOI":"10.3115\/981210.981211"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref057","unstructured":"Scha RJH , 1983. \u201cLogical foundations for question answering\u201d. PhD thesis."},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref027","first-page":"219","article-title":"BASEBALL: An automatic question answerer","volume":"19","author":"Green","year":"1961","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref002","volume-title":"Research Programme in Natural Language Processing, Final Report","author":"Alshawi","year":"1989"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref025","volume-title":"Natural Language Processing in LISP","author":"Gazdar","year":"1989"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref060","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sparck Jones K and Tait JI , 1984. \u201cLinguistically motivated descriptive term selection\u201d. Proceedings of the COLING 84, 10th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, 22nd Annual Meeting of the ACL, pp 287\u2013290. Stanford, CA.","DOI":"10.3115\/980491.980551"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref040","volume-title":"A Technique for Managing the Lexicon in a Natural Language Interface to a Changing Database","author":"Kaplan","year":"1980"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref018","volume-title":"RENDEZVOUS Version 1: An Experimental English-Language Query Formulation System for Casual Users of Relational Databases","author":"Codd","year":"1978"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref064","volume-title":"A Metadata Advisor: Some Sample Queries","author":"Storrs","year":"1985"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref029","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/0004-3702(87)90011-7"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref051","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Moore RC , 1982. \u201cPanel: Natural language access to databases\u2014theoretical\/technical issues\u201d. Proceedings of the 20th ACL, pp 44\u201366, 169\u2013171. Toronto.","DOI":"10.3115\/981251.981261"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref024","unstructured":"Frost DP , 1989. \u201cThe design of a natural language interface for medical expert systems\u201d. PhD thesis, University of London (University College and Middlesex School of Medicine."},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref070","first-page":"110","article-title":"An efficient easily adaptable system for interpreting natural language queries","volume":"8","author":"Warren","year":"1982","journal-title":"American Journal of Computational Linguistics"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref033","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/S0020-7373(77)80037-0"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref023","first-page":"57","article-title":"Natural language access to databases: Interpreting update requests","volume":"9","author":"Davidson","year":"1983","journal-title":"American Journal of Computational Linguistics"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref059","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sparck Jones K , 1984. \u201cPanel: Natural language and databases, again\u201d. 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Karlsruhe, West Germany."},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref028","volume-title":"Readings in Natural Language Processing","author":"Grosz","year":"1986"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref007","volume-title":"LOKI: A Logic Oriented Approach to Data and Knowledge Bases Supporting Natural Language Interaction","author":"Binot","year":"1988"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref050","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mellish CS , 1989. \u201cSome chart-based techniques for parsing ill-formed input\u201d. Proceedings of the 27th ACL, pp 102\u2013109. Vancouver.","DOI":"10.3115\/981623.981636"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref012","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Brennan SE , 1988. \u201cThe multi-media articulation of answers in a natural language database query system\u201d. Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, pp 1\u20138. 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Los Angeles."},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref047","first-page":"1","article-title":"Paraphrasing questions using given and new information","volume":"9","author":"McKeown","year":"1983","journal-title":"American Journal of Computational Linguistics"},{"key":"S0269888900005476_ref058","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sondheimer NK , 1981. \u201cPanel: Evaluation of natural language front ends to databases\u201d. Proceedings of the 19th ACL, pp 29\u201342. 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