Text-based Queries

•	How can I test the natural language search interface?

•	I submit natural language queries but I do not get any results. What did I do wrong?

•	Are there any syntactical rules I have to follow when formulating a query?

How can I test the natural language search interface?

First you need to load an ontology. It is preferable to get some familiarity with the ontology before you start making queries. The best way to do this is to browse the loaded ontology to view all the concepts, the corresponding attributes and relations to other concepts. Once you get an idea about the concepts and their relationships you can start to develop a natural language query by typing concepts that are related with each other. This is the best way to test the NLSI.

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I submit natural language queries but I do not get any results. What did I do wrong?

There are several possible reasons:

•	There is no ontology loaded. This means that you have tried to pose a natural language query to an empty knowledge base because there is no ontology loaded. In this case, it is natural that you do not get any results.

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The natural language query does not contain any ontological terms.
The query engine supports ontology-based search. That is, it tries to map natural language queries to ontologies. If the natural language query does not contain any ontological terms then the query engine was not able to map the query successfully. This is equivalent to the submission of an empty query. That is why there are no results.

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The natural language query contains ontological terms, but no results.
Either there is not a logical combination between the identified ontological search terms or there are no result instances available in the knowledge base. For example, when the query contains two concepts and the loaded ontology do not have any relations between these two concepts defined, then it is not possible to find an ontological triple which contains both concepts.

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Are there any syntactical rules I have to follow when formulating a query?

Yes, there are some syntactical rules. After loading an ontology you can start posing natural-language queries. Here is a list of syntactical rules you need to have in mind:

•	In the loaded ontology concepts are represented as a single string without blanks. You can either use these terms (as they are represented in the tree) or if one concept is composed of more than one word (e.g. SoftwareTool) you can split it into its individual terms (i.e. Software tool).

•	The natural language query engine is able to recognize plural terms and handles also upper and lower cases.

•	Example: The following queries vary in their syntax but they ask for the same information.

o	Which SoftwareTool support which Task?

o	Which SoftwareTools support which task?

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