Edgebase: A Cooperative Query Answering Database System With A Natural Language Interface

Traditional Database Management Systems (DBMS) require users to meticulously construct and submit queries to generate answers. The lack of query syntax flexibility in traditional database systems make results in simple and direct answers queries retrieve precisely matched elements stated in the given Boolean query. In this paper, we propose a Cooperative Query Answering Database System (CDBS) that provide answers to user queries in the same manner as humans do, and not as machines. The method of "Cooperative Query Answering (CQA)", emanated from the perception that to provide adequate and "complete" answers to queries, recognition of users' intentions is vital. Most database systems require users to submit their queries using SQL syntax. In addition to presenting answers to queries in human like manner, we present a cooperative approach to query submission. By this, we present an architecture that combines the rich features of html, Natural Language (NL) with Query By Form (QBF) method and MySQL to enable our proposed system accept user queries in plain English language. To authenticate our approach and proposed system, a set of thorough experiments were conducted on two database systems using mysqlslap benchmark and a comparative study with other methods is done.