Information Management System: The Natural Dialogue System

The Natural Dialogue System (NDS) is a tool to aid programmers in the implementation of time-sharing-based computer systems which employ keyword-oriented languages and a variety of styles of manmachine dialogue to converse with members of a nonprogrammer user audience. By keyword-oriented languages we mean languages of the type illustrated by Sinowitz 1 and suggested as an alternative to natural 1725 1726 THE BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL, DECEMBER 1 9 7 3 language for communicating with information management systems by Chai. 2 N D S provides the designer of such a language with t h e ability to define the syntax of the statements in the language, the forms of their translations, methods for detecting errors made by users of the language, and diagnostic messages to be sent to users when errors are detected. In addition, NDS provides facilities for the language designer to specify the style of dialogue which will exist between the system and its users. N D S has been operational on an experimental basis since 1970. It has been implemented under five different host operating systems (including one batch system). Its primary use has been in the area of interactive query languages for information management systems, including inventory management systems, a budget control system, 3 a work force administration system, information retrieval systems based on surveys of financial and equipment data, and a generalpurpose hierarchical data base management system. 4 Other uses have included a data checking specification language, a report generator composition language, and bulk data i n p u t / o u t p u t format specification languages.