Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications

DEXA 2017: Database and Expert Systems Applications pp 19–34Cite as

QAestro – Semantic-Based Composition of Question Answering Pipelines

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10438))

Abstract

The demand for interfaces that allow users to interact with computers in an intuitive, effective, and efficient way is increasing. Question Answering (QA) systems address this need by answering questions posed by humans using knowledge bases. In recent years, many QA systems and related components have been developed both by practitioners and the research community. Since QA involves a vast number of (partially overlapping) subtasks, existing QA components can be combined in various ways to build tailored QA systems that perform better in terms of scalability and accuracy in specific domains and use cases. However, to the best of our knowledge, no systematic way exists to formally describe and automatically compose such components. Thus, in this work, we introduce QAestro, a framework for semantically describing both QA components and developer requirements for QA component composition. QAestro relies on a controlled vocabulary and the Local-as-View (LAV) approach to model QA tasks and components, respectively. Furthermore, the problem of QA component composition is mapped to the problem of LAV query rewriting, and state-of-the-art SAT solvers are utilized to efficiently enumerate the solutions. We have formalized 51 existing QA components implemented in 20 QA systems using QAestro. Our empirical results suggest that QAestro enumerates the combinations of QA components that effectively implement QA developer requirements.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.okbqa.org/.

  2. 2.

    All components can be found at http://repository.okbqa.org.

  3. 3.

    http://alchemyapi.com.

  4. 4.

    http://qald.sebastianwalter.org/.

  5. 5.

    http://reasoning.cs.ucla.edu/c2d/.

  6. 6.

    The graph visualization was generated with cytoscape - http://www.cytoscape.org.

References

  1. Androutsopoulos, I., Ritchie, G.D., Thanisch, P.: Natural language interfaces to databases - an introduction. Nat. Lang. Eng. 1(1), 29–81 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Arvelo, Y., Bonet, B., Vidal, M.: Compilation of query-rewriting problems into tractable fragments of propositional logic. In: Proceedings of the 21st National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 18th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Berardi, D., Cheikh, F., Giacomo, G.D., Patrizi, F.: Automatic service composition via simulation. Int. J. Found. Comput. Sci. 19(2), 429–451 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Bolc, L. (ed.): Natural Language Communication with Computers. LNCS, vol. 63. Springer, Heidelberg (1978). doi:10.1007/BFb0031367

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Both, A., Diefenbach, D., Singh, K., Shekarpour, S., Cherix, D., Lange, C.: Qanary-a methodology for vocabulary-driven open question answering systems. In: ESWC (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Cabrio, E., Cojan, J., Aprosio, A.P., Magnini, B., Lavelli, A., Gandon, F.: QAKiS: an open domain QA system based on relational patterns. In: Proceedings of the ISWC 2012 Posters and Demonstrations Track (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Dubey, M., Dasgupta, S., Sharma, A., Höffner, K., Lehmann, J.: AskNow: a framework for natural language query formalization in SPARQL. In: Sack, H., Blomqvist, E., d’Aquin, M., Ghidini, C., Ponzetto, S.P., Lange, C. (eds.) ESWC 2016. LNCS, vol. 9678, pp. 300–316. Springer, Cham (2016). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-34129-3_19

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Ferrández, Ó., Spurk, C., Kouylekov, M., Dornescu, I., Ferrández, S., Negri, M., Izquierdo, R., Tomás, D., Orasan, C., Neumann, G., Magnini, B., González, J.L.V.: The QALL-ME framework: a specifiable-domain multilingual question answering architecture. J. Web Semant. 9(2), 137–145 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Finkel, J.R., Grenager, T., Manning, C.D.: Incorporating non-local information into information extraction systems by Gibbs sampling. In: 43rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Gomes, C.P., Kautz, H.A., Sabharwal, A., Selman, B.: Satisfiability Solvers (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Halevy, A.Y.: Answering queries using views: a survey. VLDB J. 10(4), 270–294 (2001)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Höffner, K., Walter, S., Marx, E., Usbeck, R., Lehmann, J., Ngonga Ngomo, A.-C.: Survey on challenges of question answering in the semantic web. Semant. Web J. (2016). http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/content/survey-challenges-question-answering-semantic-web

  13. Izquierdo, D., Vidal, M.-E., Bonet, B.: An expressive and efficient solution to the service selection problem. In: Patel-Schneider, P.F., Pan, Y., Hitzler, P., Mika, P., Zhang, L., Pan, J.Z., Horrocks, I., Glimm, B. (eds.) ISWC 2010. LNCS, vol. 6496, pp. 386–401. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-17746-0_25

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Konstantinidis, G., Ambite, J.L.: Scalable query rewriting: a graph-based approach. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Levy, A.Y., Rajaraman, A., Ordille, J.J.: Querying heterogeneous information sources using source descriptions. In: Proceedings of 22th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  16. López, V., Uren, V.S., Sabou, M., Motta, E.: Is question answering fit for the semantic web?: a survey. Semant. Web 2(2), 125–155 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Marx, E., Usbeck, R., Ngomo, A.N., Höffner, K., Lehmann, J., Auer, S.: Towards an open question answering architecture. In: SEMANTICS (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Mendes, P.N., Jakob, M., García-Silva, A., Bizer, C.: DBpedia spotlight: shedding light on the web of documents. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Semantic Systems, I-SEMANTICS (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Singh, K., Both, A., Diefenbach, D., Shekarpour, S.: Towards a message-driven vocabulary for promoting the interoperability of question answering systems. In: ICSC (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Ullman, J.D.: Information integration using logical views. Theor. Comput. Sci. 239(2), 189–210 (2000)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  21. Unger, C., Bühmann, L., Lehmann, J., Ngomo, A.N., Gerber, D., Cimiano, P.: Template-based question answering over RDF data. In: WWW (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Unger, C., Freitas, A., Cimiano, P.: An introduction to question answering over linked data. In: Koubarakis, M., Stamou, G., Stoilos, G., Horrocks, I., Kolaitis, P., Lausen, G., Weikum, G. (eds.) Reasoning Web 2014. LNCS, vol. 8714, pp. 100–140. Springer, Cham (2014). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-10587-1_2

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Usbeck, R., Ngonga Ngomo, A.-C., Röder, M., Gerber, D., Coelho, S.A., Auer, S., Both, A.: AGDISTIS - graph-based disambiguation of named entities using linked data. In: Mika, P., et al. (eds.) ISWC 2014. LNCS, vol. 8796, pp. 457–471. Springer, Cham (2014). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-11964-9_29

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Parts of this work received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 642795 (WDAqua).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS), Sankt Augustin, Germany

    Kuldeep Singh, Ioanna Lytra, Maria-Esther Vidal, Christoph Lange & Sören Auer

  2. Institute for Applied Computer Science, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Kuldeep Singh, Ioanna Lytra, Harsh Thakkar, Christoph Lange & Sören Auer

  3. Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Dharmen Punjani

Authors
  1. Kuldeep Singh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ioanna Lytra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Maria-Esther Vidal
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Dharmen Punjani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Harsh Thakkar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Christoph Lange
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Sören Auer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ioanna Lytra .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    Djamal Benslimane

  2. University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Ernesto Damiani

  3. University of Michigan, Dearborn, Michigan, USA

    William I. Grosky

  4. Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France

    Abdelkader Hameurlain

  5. Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, USA

    Amit Sheth

  6. Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria

    Roland R. Wagner

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Singh, K. et al. (2017). QAestro – Semantic-Based Composition of Question Answering Pipelines. In: Benslimane, D., Damiani, E., Grosky, W., Hameurlain, A., Sheth, A., Wagner, R. (eds) Database and Expert Systems Applications. DEXA 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10438. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64468-4_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64468-4_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64467-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64468-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation