NLProv: Natural Language Provenance

Abstract

We propose to present NLProv; an end-to-end Natural Language (NL) interface for database queries. Previous work has focused on interfaces for specifying NL questions, which are then compiled into queries in a formal language (e.g. SQL). We build upon this work, but focus on presenting a detailed form of the answers in Natural Language. The answers that we present are importantly based on the provenance of tuples in the query result, detailing not only which are the results but also their explanations. We develop a novel method for transforming provenance information to NL, by leveraging the original NL question structure. Furthermore, since provenance information is typically large, we present two solutions for its effective presentation as NL text; one that is based on provenance factorization with novel desiderata relevant to the NL case, and one that is based on summarization.

Publication
In PVLDB 9(13)