AutoBrowse in Lex Lookup (Settings/Preferences tab)

The AutoBrowse checkbox controls the behavior of the Lookup button on the Lexicon Lookup window. To use the Lookup function, a word (or phrase) must first be typed into the drop-down box above the Lookup button. Clicking the Lookup button then displays any known definitions of the word. If the AutoBrowse checkbox is set ON, some additional lookups may be performed in cases where the original word has defined synonyms. In effect, the entire lexicon will be scanned for other words which share the same synonym, and these will be listed in the Browse panel.

The reason this feature is optional is that scanning through each and every word can be time-consuming on very large lexicons. If the speed of lookups becomes a concern, disable this feature and perform this type of scan by entering words manually on the Browse panel. To duplicate the action of AutoBrowse, you would need to select the SYNS radio button of Browse, enter the synonym you're interested in, and press Enter or Tab (or click the Browse display panel).

Let's take an example of how this might be used. In the Northwind database, after the initial analysis, we're interested in how the interface will interpret the word "merchant". (In the following example, quote marks are never typed-in, they're meant only to set off words for clarity.) If we look up this word, the results come back as:

PNoun: DATA CAPDATA COMPOUND BIT1 SINGULARITY CONTACTNAME SUPPLIERS_

This is rather surprising. It means that "merchant" is actually text data contained in one of the Northwind tables. In fact, we can tell a few other things by looking at this entry. For instance, we know that the word appears in the ContactName field of the Suppliers table. We know that it has an initial cap ("Merchant"), and that it's part of a compound word entry. We also know that "Merchant" doesn't appear frequently in this table, in fact it appears only once (Singularity).

Before looking inside the Suppliers table to see what's what, let's find out how Access ELF interprets "merchant" in a question. Typing in "List the merchants", we get a translation like this:
SELECT DISTINCT Customers.ContactName , Customers.CompanyName FROM Customers ;

If we look at the definition of "merchant" a second time, we see that something has changed. In addition to the original definition, there are now two new lines:
Verb: REGULAR ROOT TRANSITIVE
CNoun: REGULAR MANKIND

The first time a given word is used in a question, Access ELF looks up that word in its Reference database (much like a normal dictionary/thesaurus). It adds that information about the word into its lexicon for a fuller picture of how the word might be used. Even though "Merchant" actually appears in one of our tables, Access ELF judges that, in this case (because of the non-capitalization and the plural), we mean "merchant" in a more general sense -- as some kind of "person".

If you look at the Suppliers table expecting to see something like "Acme Merchant Services" in the ContactName field, you'll be surprised. The only "merchant" is Robb Merchant, contact for New England Seafood Cannery. This emphasizes the many ways a word can be used, and how many opportunities there are for ambiguity and confusion. Now, even though Access ELF avoided this potential problem, the answer it gave is possibly not the one we hoped to see. While it's true that (in this business, at least) customers happen to be merchants of some kind, when we use the term "merchant", we might mean something more specific -- our merchants, that is our suppliers.

To define "merchant" as a synonym for "supplier", we can use the Lex Lookup window. Click the SYNS radio button of Browse so that "Browse for synonyms of:" appears above the Browse panel. Enter "supplier" into the browse-for textbox and press Enter. Nothing happens! That's because there are no synonyms for "supplier" in the lexicon. To change this, enter "merchant" into the Add box, and click Add. (Remember, don't type the quotes.) "Merchant" now appears in the Browse panel as a synonym of "supplier". Our original question "List the merchants" will now be translated as:
SELECT DISTINCT Suppliers.SupplierID , Suppliers.CompanyName FROM Suppliers ;

Now that we have a synonym defined, we can see the difference between using the Lex Lookup window with the AutoBrowse feature turned ON or OFF. Entering "merchant" into the Lookup box and clicking Lookup with AutoBrowse ON gives back a list of all synonyms of "supplier", which is the synonym we defined for "merchant". So far, there's only one word defined in this way.

Notice that we're not getting a list of the synonyms of "merchant", not exactly. It's a list of the synonyms of merchant's synonym -- that is, all the words which mean "supplier", just as "merchant" does. The difference becomes more clear if you look up the word "supplier". It doesn't have either itself or "merchant" as a synonym -- its synonym is "SupplierID".

To accomplish the same actions with AutoBrowse OFF, we'd simply need to use the Browse panel manually. For instance, once we've looked up "merchant", we see the definition SYN (Supplier). To find out which other words have "supplier" as a synonym, select SYNS and type "supplier" into the browse-for textbox. Press Enter to see the results.