BUG: Entity Defaults Are Ignored When Clarification Question Is Asked (286290)

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Examples of Clarification Questions

English Query needs clarification when it is asked an ambiguous question. For example, suppose you have two entities:

• A Customer.
  
  and
  
  
• An Employee.

Both of the entities have FirstName and LastName attributes. The Employee entity has an addtional Contract attribute. The entities are based on the following SQL Server table definitions:

CUSTOMER(ID int primary key, 
         FirstName varchar(20),
         LastName varchar(20))

EMPLOYEE(ID int primary key, 
         FirstName varchar(20),
         LastName varchar(20),
         Contract bit))

If a user asks the question "What can you tell me about John Williams?" English Query needs to ask a clarification question because it cannot automatically determine the entity to which the question refers. In the example, John Williams could either be a Customer or Employee and there are two possible queries to the SQL Server server:

SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM Customer<BR/>
SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM Employee<BR/>

Therefore, the question is ambiguous. The user (or client application) must clarify whether the question refers to an Employee or a Customer in order to obtain a result.

Enity Defaults

Entity defaults are used when results need to be restricted. Using the preceding example, suppose you add an entity default to Employees that restricts results to employees with a contract. So the statement "List the employees" only returns employees having Contract = 1.

The problem arises when you again ask the question "What can you tell me about John Williams?" Suppose Contract = 0 for John Williams. English Query first asks a clarification question because the question is ambiguous. Suppose the user (or client application) clarifies by stating that John Williams is an Employee. Because the Employee entity has a default Contract = 1, no results should be returned for this question. This is not what happens because the information about John Williams is returned. The default condition is ignored because a clarification question was asked.

To work around this issue, you can create a SQL Server view that contains only those employees with Contract = 1. Then you create another entity by using the English Query designer based on that view. This provides an alternate to using Entity defaults.