Natural language processing and information systems

The workshop on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB)hassince1995providedaforumforacademicandindustrialresearchers and practitioners to discuss the application of natural language to both the development and use of software applications. Theuseofnaturallanguageinrelationtosoftwarehascontributedtoimpr- ing the development of software from the viewpoints of both the developers and the users. Developers bene? t from improvements in conceptual modeling, so- ware validation, natural language program speci? cations, and many other areas. Users bene? t from increased usability of applications through natural language query interfaces, semantic webs, text summarizations, etc. The integration of natural language and information systems has been a - search objective for a long time now. Today, the goal of good integration seems not so far-fetched. This is due mainly to the rapid progress of research in natural language and to the development of new and powerful technologies. The in- gration of natural language and information systems has become a convergent point towards which many researchers from several research areas are focussing.