Translating human language to database query language
started 8/26/2003; 10:38:32 AM - last post 8/29/2003; 11:05:31 AM
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Manuel Simoni - Translating human language to database query language
8/26/2003; 10:38:32 AM (reads: 6091, responses: 11)
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Ian Wehrman - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/26/2003; 8:45:00 PM (reads: 774, responses: 0)
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bryan rasmussen - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/27/2003; 1:30:16 AM (reads: 751, responses: 0)
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a propos Precise: Contrast the query Where is Washington D.C with the query Where is Washington
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Ken Hirsch - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/27/2003; 12:53:27 PM (reads: 679, responses: 1)
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One and a half cheers for software patents
Although I would really prefer to not have software patents, I don't
think that the case against them is so clear cut. There are many
terrible software patents--vague, obvious, trivial, overly broad, and so
on. But there are also software patents that are specific, novel,
useful, innovative, implementable. And it is possible that software
patents benefit us in a couple of ways.
First, companies are encouraged to publish details of their inventions
that otherwise would have been held as trade secrets. In the database
management world, most of the innovations have been made in industry,
and before software was patentable most details were kept secret. For
example, David Lomet tells me that Tandem held as secret the "repeating
history" recovery scheme that was later re-invented by Mohan and
published as part of IBM's ARIES system (parts of which were patented.).
See ARIES
for details of that system and links to good patents.
If it weren't for software patents, it's doubtful that IBM would have published such details.
Lomet himself has a couple of dozen patents. Of the ones I've looked
at, they are all high quality patents. On the question of patents
encouraging innovation, he says:
I believe that software patents increase the value of research to
companies, and hence that there is more industrial research because of
it. It is impossible to know which inventions would or would not have
been made due to software patents, but I firmly believe that there would
be less research, and that some of the inventions would not have been
made- and some that would still have been made would be held as trade
secrets. For example, almost all of my inventions were made while I was
working in a research lab. It seems highly plausible to me that had I
held a different job, I would not have made as many inventions.
(Personal Communication)
I'm not sure that this effect is as significant, and the ill effects of
all the low-quality software patents may outweigh the benefits, but I
think it's important to admit that there are some good effects.
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Ehud Lamm - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/27/2003; 1:00:47 PM (reads: 709, responses: 0)
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Since this is LtU, how about relating this to programming languages?
Quite a few innovations, or at least widespread languages, came from research labs. Most of these were never patented as such.
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Chris Rathman - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/28/2003; 11:49:33 AM (reads: 626, responses: 3)
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IMHO, patents don't work so well when it comes programming languages. For new languages or features within an old language, the push is to get people to use the language. Anything which interferes with the process will doom the language.
I guess you could try to patent a DSL, but it's only useful insofar as you can keep others from using your variation.
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Ehud Lamm - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/28/2003; 11:56:53 AM (reads: 638, responses: 2)
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Of course. I think that even VB isn't patented (right?). Languages are standardized, and that is something completely different.
The Ada(83) mandate, which did more harm than good, is the closest thing to a language patent that I can think of.
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Frank Atanassow - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/29/2003; 7:08:07 AM (reads: 643, responses: 1)
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The Ada(83) mandate, which did more harm than good, is the closest thing to a language patent that I can think of.
Miranda(tm), one of the predecessors of Haskell, is copyrighted or patented or something by Research Software, Ltd. Furthermore, the syntax of guards in Miranda is copyrighted or patented or something. They look something like this:
fac x = 1, if x = 0
= x * fac (x-1), otherwise
It is partly for this reason that Haskell has a different syntax for guards. Needless to say, not many people are happy about the Miranda situation, not least authors who are always forced to put in a footnote to the effect that "Miranda(tm) is a trademark of Research Software, Ltd." (Yes, this really happens.)
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Ehud Lamm - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/29/2003; 7:10:49 AM (reads: 666, responses: 0)
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Right. I should have remembered this. It is infinitely amusing to see the (tm)'s in academic papers. I just love it.
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Ken Hirsch - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/29/2003; 9:30:24 AM (reads: 588, responses: 1)
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My thesis is that when inventions are patentable, companies will publish
more technical details of things that could be kept as trade secrets
than they otherwise would. The user-visible elements of a language
wouldn't fall into that description, but code generation, VMs, JIT, and
many other details of implementation would.
I don't know enough about the history of language implementation to know
if companies are, in fact, publishing more details than they did before
the 1980s. Perhaps some others could comment. Here are some patent
searches on Class 717 for
IBM,
Microsoft,
HP,
the late
DEC,
Sun and
Intel.
By no means are all of these the kinds of patents I'm talking about, but
some are. Some do refer to user-visible aspects, and many are pretty
trivial patents that the companies have to file defensively. I'm not
sure how Microsoft feels about patents after the recent 520 million
dollar judgment against them. As far as I'm aware, Microsoft has never
sued anybody for patent infringement.
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Chris Rathman - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/29/2003; 11:05:31 AM (reads: 584, responses: 0)
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Well, if you take the case of Miranda, the amount of documentation on the web is minimal (with half the links broken). Contrasted that with the open standard of Haskell which arose out of the concern that Miranda was a proprietary language. Not sure if the owners of Miranda made money by keeping the language to themselves, but in the long run Miranda is a doomed programming language, which is odd since it had at least a 5 year jump on Haskell.
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Ehud Lamm - Re: Translating human language to database query language
8/29/2003; 2:05:38 PM (reads: 594, responses: 0)
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The user-visible elements of a language wouldn't fall into that description, but code generation, VMs, JIT, and many other details of implementation would.
That's an interesting thesis. I am not sure its true (there are many publications about implementation techniques), but it's an idea worth thinking about.
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