Cognitive system virtual corpus training and utilization

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program is executed on a computing device and specifically configures the computing device to implement a virtual corpus engine and a cognitive computing system that operates to:

• receive, by the cognitive computing system, a natural language input from a requestor device;
• perform, by the cognitive computing system, natural language processing on the natural language input to generate an inquiry to be processed by the virtual corpus engine;
• analyze, by the virtual corpus engine, the inquiry to extract one or more features of the inquiry;
• select, by the virtual corpus engine, a weight matrix associated with a virtual corpus based on the extracted one or more features of the inquiry, wherein the virtual corpus is a logical data structure that comprises a plurality of actual corpora of information stored as a plurality of content data structures in one or more data storage devices, and wherein the weight matrix comprises a separate weight value for each actual corpus in the plurality of actual corpora;
• select, by the virtual corpus engine, a set of actual corpora from the plurality of actual corpora based on the weight values in the weight matrix;
• process, by the virtual corpus engine, the inquiry using the selected set of actual corpora;
• receive, by the virtual corpus engine, results of the processing of the inquiry using the selected set of actual corpora;
• process, by hypothesis generation and evaluation logic of the cognitive computing system, the results of processing the inquiry using the selected set of actual corpora to generate a response to the natural language input;
• and
• output, by the cognitive computing system, the response to the natural language input to the requestor device.

An apparatus comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor, wherein the at least one memory comprises instructions which are executed by the at least one processor and specifically configure the apparatus to implement a virtual corpus engine and a cognitive computing system that operate to:
• receive, by the cognitive computing system, a natural language input from a requestor device;
• perform, by the cognitive computing system, natural language processing on the natural language input to generate an inquiry to be processed by the virtual corpus engine;
• analyze, by the virtual corpus engine, the inquiry to extract one or more features of the inquiry;
• select, by the virtual corpus engine, a weight matrix associated with a virtual corpus based on the extracted one or more features of the inquiry, wherein the virtual corpus is a logical data structure that comprises a plurality of actual corpora of information stored as a plurality of content data structures in one or more data storage devices, and wherein the weight matrix comprises a separate weight value for each actual corpus in the plurality of actual corpora;
• select, by the virtual corpus engine, a set of actual corpora from the plurality of actual corpora based on the weight values in the weight matrix;
• process, by the virtual corpus engine, the inquiry using the selected set of actual corpora;
• receive, by the virtual corpus engine, results of the processing of the inquiry using the selected set of actual corpora;
• process, by hypothesis generation and evaluation logic of the cognitive computing system, the results of processing the inquiry using the selected set of actual corpora to generate a response to the natural language input;
• and
• output, by the cognitive computing system, the response to the natural language input to the requestor device.