Use Semantic Language Tools to Better Understand User Intentions

y previous article showed you how to improve your applications' sophistication by using the power of ontologies to tap into conceptual information about a domain. This article discusses how to supplement applications by providing them with a rudimentary understanding of English vocabulary.

Software applications have many uses for recognizing vocabulary, ranging from spell-checking to providing alternative suggestions for search criteria—the scenario explored in this article. You will see how to create a storefront application that provides free-form search access into the store's inventory. Because the goal of any store is to make money, this store leverages a lexical understanding of the user's search to return the greatest number of relevant results. This storefront will, for example, try to provide relevant results for the intended search even when users inadvertently mistype their search criteria. Figure 1 shows a simple example.