Microsoft English Query, a component of SQL Server 7.0, uses natural language technology to help users find database information using plain English instead of complex SQL statements. Database developers can easily create English Query searches in any environment that supports the Component Object Model (COM), such as Web sites running Active Server Pages.

Easy to Use
See for yourself how simple an English Query interface makes data retrieval with one of our online or downloadable demos. You can pose a natural language question to the Microsoft Expedia™ Hotels or Northwind Traders databases online, or download the sample FoodMart database to see how English Query works on your own computer.

Easy to Set Up
English Query consists of an authoring tool and an engine. To implement natural language searching, you first use the authoring tool to provide domain knowledge to the engine. The authoring tool makes it easy to relate database entities to objects in the domain. For example, you might create a verb relationship between salespeople and products by indicating that "salespeople sell products." English Query uses these relationships to perform true deep natural language parsing of users' questions, which provides better search results than you would get using keyword-based technology.

The engine converts English questions into standard Structured Query Language (SQL) statements, and then sends these statements to the database. For instance, the engine converts "What hotels in Hawaii have scuba?" to:

select distinct dbo.HotelProperty.HotelName as "Hotel Name", dbo.HotelProperty.USReservationPhone as "Phone", dbo.HotelProperty.StreetAddress1 as "Street Address", dbo.HotelProperty.CityName as "City", dbo.HotelProperty.StateRegionName as "State or Region" from dbo.HotelProperty, AmenityNames, Amenities where dbo.HotelProperty.StateRegionName='Hawaii' and AmenityNames.Amenity='Scuba' and AmenityNames.AmenityID=Amenities.AmenityID and dbo.HotelProperty.HotelID=Amenities.Hotelid

The engine also processes responses from the database.

Easy to Embed in a Web Site
You can employ English Query in any environment that supports COM. In particular, English Query comes with sample scripts that help you set up natural language searching on the Web. English Query works with Web pages running on a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) version 3.0 or higher.