Natural Language for Database Queries: A Laboratory Study

Are natural language systems for database queries meeting their goals, and are these goals appropriate? The recently completed Advanced Language Project at New York University combined a field experiment with two laboratory studies to examine these issues by comparing performance between subjects using the formal database language SQL and subjects using the prototype natural language system, USL. This article describes the design and results of the larger laboratory experiment. The results presented offer some promise for the usability of natural language under certain conditions.