DEMOSTRATION SYSTEMS IN ISLOntology-based Querying
The purpose of the interdisciplinary project OntoQuery is to develop theories and methods for content-based information retrieval by devising a description language whose expressive power covers not only the purely linguistic analysis of texts, but also the descripton of a concept ontology and the analysis of queries. This part of the project is intended to serve as the basis of the construction of a prototype system for content-based retrieval of texts from (existing) text databases and knowledge bases. Since the query language will be Danish, the prototype system will have built-in knowledge of the morphology, grammatical functions, possible meanings, and sense relations of the relevant Danish words and phrases. This system functionality is obtained by devising an internal representation, viz. the above-mentioned ontology, which combines the descriptions of words with a coherent taxonomy of the concepts and terms of the domains selected. In this sense the system will be more intelligent and user friendly than search engines currently in use, which typically employ comparatively primitive search strategies based solely on the occurrence of string sequences, words, or combinations of words. The project is funded by the Danish Research Agency under the Information Technology Programme.