QueryGen: Semantic interpretation of keyword queries over heterogeneous information systems

In this paper we present a system that performs semantic keyword interpretation on different data repositories. Our system (1) discovers the meaning of the input keywords by consulting a generic pool of ontologies and applying different disambiguation techniques; (2) once the meaning of each keyword has been established, the system combines them in a formal query that captures the semantics intended by the user, considering different formal query languages and possibilities that could arise, but avoiding inconsistent and semantically equivalent queries; and, finally, (3) after the user has validated the generated query that best fits her/his intended meaning, the system routes the query to the appropriate data repositories that will retrieve data according to the semantics of such a query. Experimental results show the semantic interpretation capabilities and the feasibility of our approach.