Patent attributes
A method for providing information to a user in response to a received user query. A natural language analysis generates substrings relevant to the user query. An ontology analysis outputs: terms of an ontology matching the relevant generated substrings; and relationships between the terms. A query analysis analyzes the user query regarding the outputted terms and relationships, including ascertaining whether the user query is more suitable for service than for an information search. If it is so ascertained, then service actions for the user to perform are identified to the user. If it is not so ascertained, then: the user query is refined based on the outputted terms and relationships; a search query is generated based on the refined user query, a search is initiated based on the search query, and results of the search are provided to the user.
