---
title: "Natural Language Access To A Large Data Base: An Engineering Approach"
authors:
  - "D. Walts"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1975/137"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1975/0137.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1975
pages: "868-871"
track: "Miscellaneous Applications Of A.I."
keywords:
---

# Natural Language Access To A Large Data Base: An Engineering Approach

D. Walts

*Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 868-871.

## Abstract

An intelligent program which accepts natural language queries can allow a non-technical user to easily obtain information from a large non-uniform data base. This paper discusses the design of a program which will tolerate a wide variety of requests including ones with pronouns and referential phrases. The system embodies a certain amount of common sense, so that for example, it knows when it does or does not understand a particular request and it can bypass actual data base search in answering unreasonable requests. The system is conceptually simple and could be easily adapted to other data bases.