Proposal for QA Web service definition in QolA

Luís Costa
Linguateca & SINTEF ICT


This page describes our proposal for the definition of QA systems as Web services.

Definition Language

We propose to define the QA Web services using
WSDL (Web service definition language).

The definition of the QA system Esfinge as a QA Web service is available here as ilustration.

Basic Operations

The QA Web services should provide a set of basic operations: These are some operations that we think can be relevant to this pilot. You can contact us, the QolA team, at QolA AT linguateca DOT pt or use the form for comments below to comment these operations and/or suggest other operations that you also consider relevant.

Detailed description of the Basic Operations

Here we give all the details about the basic operations that should be defined for the QA Web services.

GetSupportedLanguagePairs

This operation returns the language pairs supported by the QA Web service.

Parameters

No parameters.

Return Value

Field Type Description
Languages LanguagePairsArray Array containing the language pairs supported by the QA Web service.

The elements of type LanguagePairsArray should be of the form:

Field Type Description
SourceLanguage String A source language ("bg", "de", "en", "es", "fr", "it", "nl" or "pt").
TargetLanguage String A target language ("bg", "de", "en", "es", "fr", "it", "nl" or "pt").

GetSupportedEncodings

This operation returns the character encodings accepted by a QA Web service.

Parameters

No parameters.

Return Value

Field Type Description
Encodings Array List of encodings accepted by the QA Web service ("UTF-8", "ISO 8859-1" or others).

GetResourcesUsed

This operation returns the resources used by QA system.

Parameters

No parameters.

Return Value

Field Type Description
ResourcesUsed Array List of resources used by the QA system ("AnnotatedCorpus", "Web", "Gazeteers", "Ontologies", "NamedEntityRecognizer", "Parser" and other codes agreed among the participants and organizers of this pilot).

GetModulesUsed

This operation returns the modules used by QA system.

Parameters

No parameters.

Return Value

Field Type Description
ModulesUsed Array List of modules used by the QA system ("CoreferenceResolution", "DeixisResolution", "InferenceEngine", "AnswerValidation", "NaturalLanguageGeneration" and other codes agreed among the participants and organizers of this pilot).

GetAccuracy

This operation returns the accuracy obtained by the QA system with CLEF 2005 questions for the several types of questions for a language pair (source language, target language).

Parameters

Name Type Description
SourceLanguage String Defines the source language ("bg", "de", "en", "es", "fr", "it", "nl" or "pt").
TargetLanguage String Defines the target language ("bg", "de", "en", "es", "fr", "it", "nl" or "pt").

Return Value

Field Type Description
Total Percentage Percentage of right answers in total
Factoid Percentage Percentage of right answers for factoid questions
Definition Percentage Percentage of right answers for definition questions
List Percentage Percentage of right answers for list questions
TemporallyRestricted Percentage Percentage of right answers for temporally restricted questions
FactoidPerson Percentage Percentage of right answers for factoid questions of type Person
FactoidTime Percentage Percentage of right answers for factoid questions of type Time
FactoidLocation Percentage Percentage of right answers for factoid questions of type Location
FactoidOrganization Percentage Percentage of right answers for factoid questions of type Organization
FactoidMeasure Percentage Percentage of right answers for factoid questions of type Measure
FactoidOther Percentage Percentage of right answers for factoid questions of type Other
DefinitionPerson Percentage Percentage of right answers for definition questions of type Person
DefinitionOrganization Percentage Percentage of right answers for definition questions of type Organization
DefinitionObject Percentage Percentage of right answers for definition questions of type Object
DefinitionOther Percentage Percentage of right answers for definition questions of type Other
TemporallyRestrictedDate Percentage Percentage of right answers for questions temporally restricted by date
TemporallyRestrictedPeriod Percentage Percentage of right answers for questions temporally restricted by period
TemporallyRestrictedEvent Percentage Percentage of right answers for questions temporally restricted by event

GetQuotaInfo

This operation returns information about how many queries a client can ask and for which period.

Parameters

Name Type Description
ClientID String A key to identify the client.

Return Value

Field Type Description
QuotaTotal Integer Number of questions a client can ask in the QuotaPeriod.
QuotaRemaining Integer Number of questions a client can ask up to the next ResetTime.
QuotaPeriod Integer Period for which the QuotaTotal applies (in seconds).
ResetTime Integer Time remaiming to the next reset (in seconds).

GetAnswer

This operation returns answers from the QA system given a question and a language pair (source language, target language).

Parameters

Name Type Description
Question String Defines the question to be processed by the QA Web Service.
SourceLanguage String Defines the source language ("bg", "de", "en", "es", "fr", "it", "nl" or "pt").
TargetLanguage String Defines the target language ("bg", "de", "en", "es", "fr", "it", "nl" or "pt").
Encoding String Character encoding of the question ("UTF-8", "ISO 8859-1" or others).
ClientID String A key to identify the client.

Return Value

Field Type Description
Answers AnswersArray Array containing the answers returned by the system.

The elements of type AnswersArray should be of the form:

Field Type Description
Answer String This is an answer returned by the QA system.
Score Percentage This is the confidence score of the answer.
Justifications JustificationsArray These are the justifications for the answer.
ResourcesUsed ResourcesArray List of resources used to obtain the answer ("AnnotatedCorpus", "Web", "Gazeteers", "Ontologies", "NamedEntityRecognizer", "Parser" and other codes agreed among the participants and organizers of this pilot).
ModulesUsed ModulesArray List of modules used to obtain the answer ("CoreferenceResolution", "DeixisResolution", "InferenceEngine", "AnswerValidation", "NaturalLanguageGeneration" and other codes agreed among the participants and organizers of this pilot).
Encoding String Character encoding of the answer ("UTF-8", "ISO 8859-1" or others).

The elements of type JustificationsArray should be of the form:

Field Type Description
Docid String This can be the docid of a document in CLEF's document colection or a URL.
Snippet String This is a passage that supports the answer.
Score Percentage This is the confidence score for the passage.


Last update: 29 November 2006.
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