FOR DEDUCTIVE QUESTION-ANSWERING SYSTEMS K u r t Konoligc SRI International

This paper1 presents a method of formally representing the information that exists in a relational database. The primary ut i l i ty of such a representation is for deductive question-answering systems that must access an existing relational database. To respond intelligently to user inquiries, such sys-tems must have a more complete representation of the domain of discourse than is generally available in the database. The problem that then arises is how to reconcile the information present in the database w i th the domain representation, so that database queries can be derived to answer the user's inquiries. Here we take the formal approach of describing a relational database as the model of a first-order language. Another first-order language, the metalanguage, is used both to represent the domain of discourse, and to describe the relationship of the database to the domain. This view proves particularly useful i