Sybase, Inc.

Ianywhere Solutions, Inc.

Nicholas K Treadgold

Babak Hodjat

Siamak Hodjat

Natural language interface to a back-end application, incorporating synonyms, suggestions, and proposals. Roughly described, synonyms are automatically added to user input to enhance the natural language interpretation, whereas suggestions and proposals are offered to the user in an interaction, usually after an interpretation of prior user input. Suggestions and synonyms can be learned from user input, whereas proposals are programmed by a third party. The selection of synonyms, suggestions, and proposals for use with particular user input can be user input context-based so that further user input can maintain context by explicitly indicating that the same context is intended, and rewards-based reinforcement can be used to better focus suggestions and proposals on the characteristics of the particular user.

Context-based suggestions mechanism and adaptive push mechanism for natural language systems

Roughly described, a context reactive user interface which offers user-selectable on-screen choices or hints to help the user follow up in the context of his or her previous interactions. Alternatively or additionally, the system can offer on-screen choices which, when selected by the user, can invoke one or more back-end applications with entry fields pre-filled from the user's previous interactions or from other contextual information.

Context reactive hints mechanism for natural language user interface

Context reactive natural-language based graphical user interface

Roughly described, a natural language interface to a back-end application incorporates synonyms automatically added to user input to enhance the natural language interpretation. Synonyms can be learned from user input and written into a synonyms database. Their selection can be based on tokens identified in user input. Natural language interpretation can be performed by agents arranged in a network, which parse the user input in a distributed manner. In an embodiment, a particular agent of the natural language interpreter receives a first message that includes the user input, returns a message claiming at least a portion of the user input, and subsequently receives a second message delegating actuation of at least that portion to the particular agent.

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Tanunda, Australia

Nicholas K Treadgold