Question-Answering System for Answering Relational Questions

A computer-implemented method comprising:

• receiving a document collection, the document collection including a first natural language document comprising text and tabular information.
• extracting features from the documents in the collection, including identifying a first tabular content within the first document and extracting features representing said tabular content;
• populating a database with the extracted features, including populating records of said database with the extracted features representing the first tabular content;
• receiving a first questions in a natural language form;
• determining a first response to the first question using the database, including:
• constructing a query in a database query language from the first question;
• providing the query to a database;
• forming the first response from an answer from the database in response to the providing of the query;
• determining a second response to the first question using the text of documents of the document collection using a trained natural language question answerer, including:
• processing at least some of the first document and the first question with said question answered to yield the second response to the first question;
• forming a third response to the first question based on a plurality of responses including the first response and the second response;
• providing the third answer in response to the receiving of the first question.