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Finally, queries come naturally.
Natural Language Shoot-out:
Click here for results from the head-to-head competition between ELF, English Query and English Wizard.
This is the Northwind Specialty Foods database, famous as the sample application of Microsoft
Access. It's a small but realistic database. Here you can see just how well the ELF language
engine performs on business databases of moderate complexity.
It's worth noticing that Microsoft won't demonstrate their own natural language query software, called "English Query", on the sample databases that they distribute, such as Northwind, or the "Pubs" SQL Server database. Instead, they demo on a "flat" file of hotel names and amenities. The reason for this is that English Query performs very badly even on the simplest databases, and on more complex databases you're better off asking "The Magic 8-Ball".
For a guided tour of English Query's demo, please see our "Other Stuff" department. But first,
play with our demos . . . and have some fun.
Okay, can we do the same Expedia Hotels interface as Microsoft, but do it better?
Of course! But we don't want to be sued by the folks in Redmond for stealing their
database. So this demo covers only hotels in California, Colorado and Connecticut, plus the
amenities they provide.
Our friends at English Wizard demo their natural language software on a crippled Customer/Order
database -- no quantities; no prices; no discounts; none of the complexity that makes using
natural language difficult. And still, their demo gives very ODD results. (How many
employees are there? 422 . . . How many hobbies are there? 422 . . . How many states? 422!)
Their other demo features a compilation of Oscars. Of course, many people like to ask questions
such as: "How many Oscars did Tom Hanks win?" English Wizard is unlikely to understand counting
questions, so the Linguistic Technology folks have thoughtfully pre-calculated the number
of Oscars for each actor and actress and added these figures into the database.
If you don't mind stopping to create a new table, each time you have a new question,
then you're in great shape with this product. Of course, isn't that exactly what
ad hoc query software is supposed to avoid?
No, our software never requires these kinds of tricks. What you see is what you get.
See the Tutorial on how we built this simple but effective interface.
"We Make Little Helpers"
ELF Software Co. 210 W 101 St. NYC NY 10025
1-800-309-8669 Last Updated: November, 1998