Welcome to the SNAP Project Home Page
SNAP is a collaboration between
Essex University and
BICC Plc, jointly funded by the
EPSRC and the DTI's
SALT
initiative.
Overview of SNAP
Information is increasingly stored in both database management systems and
also textbase systems. Many organisations are recognising that locked within
this mass of information lies their expertise, experience and knowledge base.
In order to obtain the maximum advantage from this information it is
important to ensure that personnel at all levels of the organisation have
easy and transparent access to this information.
Using present day systems accessing this information can be a daunting task.
Typically it requires the user to learn two separate querying languages,
such as SQL to access structured information and a boolean query language
to access unstructured information such as a textbase. The user is also
faced with the problem of addressing these queries to two separate programs
which were designed to work in isolation.
The SNAP project aims to build a platform from which structured and textual
information about some domain can be accessed in an integrated way through
natural language queries. The base line of SNAP is two existing
systems:
- Squirrel
- A natural language interface to SQL databases developed at Essex
University. You can read about Squirrel in more detail
here
and use our
on-line demonstration.
- An English to Boolean query convertor
- A system allowing natural language queries to be presented to a
commercial textbase management system.
The nature of these applications is very different: Squirrel performs
full analysis including semantic interpretation; while the Boolean
query module relies on shallow processing to extract search terms.
In the SNAP project we are investigating:
- How to build an environment in which two essentially different
applications can be integrated whilst safeguarding system reliability and
transparency.
- What the user requirements would be for such an integrated interface.
- The consequences of such an integration for the specification of
customisation tools.
People
The SNAP Research Group at Essex is comprised of the following people:
- Anne de Roeck - Senior Lecturer (deroe@essex.ac.uk)
- John Carson - Senior Research Officer (carsj@essex.ac.uk)
- Nick Webb - Senior Research Officer (webbnw@essex.ac.uk)
A project directory detailing contact information
for those involved in the SNAP project is available.
Publications
A brief list of some of the publications related to the SNAP Project:
- Carson, J.A., De Roeck, A.N.
The SNAP
System: A Natural Language Front End to Text and Data Bases. To
be presented at the Natural Language Processing and Industrial
Applications Conference 1996, Moncton, Canada.
- De Roeck, A.N., Fox, C.J., Lowden, B.G.T., Turner, R., Walls, B.R.
A Natural Language System Based on Formal Semantics, in Proceedings of
the International Conference on Current Issues in Computational Linguistics,
1991, Penang. Malaysia, pages 221--234.
- De Roeck, A.N., Fox, C.J., Lowden, B.G.T., Turner, R., Walls, B.R.
A Formal Approach to Translating English into SQL in Aspects of
Databases (Proceedings of the Ninth British Conference on Databases,
Wolverhampton, July 1991). Butterworth-Heinmann, pages 110--125.
- De Roeck, A.N., Fox, C.J., Lowden, B.G.T., Walls, B.R.
Modal Reasoning in Relational Systems in Journal of Database
Technology. Pergamon Press. volume 4, number 4, 1991--92, pages 235-244.
- De Roeck, A.N., Fox, C.J., Lowden, B.G.T., Walls, B.R.
An Approach to Paraphrasing Logical Query Languages in English
in Journal of Database Technology. Pergamon Press. volume 4, number 4,
1991--92, pages 227--233
About this Web Page
If you have any comments about this page please contact the maintainer
listed below.
This page is maintained by:
John Carson,
Department of Computer Science,
E-mail: carsj@essex.ac.uk
Last changed: May 1997
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