US 12,462,107 B2
Analyzing underspecified natural language utterances in a data visualization user interface
Vidya Raghavan Setlur, Portola Valley, CA (US); and Alex Djalali, Athens, GA (US)
Assigned to Tableau Software, LLC, Seattle, WA (US)
Filed by Tableau Software, LLC, Seattle, WA (US)
Filed on May 23, 2024, as Appl. No. 18/673,275.
Application 18/673,275 is a continuation of application No. 17/667,474, filed on Feb. 8, 2022, granted, now 11,995,407.
Application 17/667,474 is a continuation of application No. 16/234,470, filed on Dec. 27, 2018, granted, now 11,244,114, issued on Feb. 8, 2022.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/742,857, filed on Oct. 8, 2018.
Prior Publication US 2024/0311571 A1, Sep. 19, 2024
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 40/30 (2020.01); G06F 3/0481 (2022.01); G06F 3/0484 (2022.01); G06F 16/2455 (2019.01); G06F 16/248 (2019.01); G06F 16/9032 (2019.01); G06F 16/9038 (2019.01); G06F 16/904 (2019.01); G06F 40/205 (2020.01); G06F 40/211 (2020.01); G06F 40/284 (2020.01)
CPC G06F 40/30 (2020.01) [G06F 3/0481 (2013.01); G06F 3/0484 (2013.01); G06F 16/24556 (2019.01); G06F 16/248 (2019.01); G06F 16/90332 (2019.01); G06F 16/9038 (2019.01); G06F 16/904 (2019.01); G06F 40/205 (2020.01); G06F 40/211 (2020.01); G06F 40/284 (2020.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for generating data visualizations from natural language expressions, comprising:
at a computing device having a display, one or more processors, and memory storing one or more programs configured for execution by the one or more processors:
parsing a user-specified natural language command to form a first expression;
determining that the first expression is ambiguous or underspecified;
in accordance with the determination:
inferring first information using one or more inferencing rules, wherein at least one of the inferencing rules is based on an attribute of data fields and/or data values in a data source and the first information is information that is (i) not specified in the user-specified natural language command and (ii) obtained from a semantic model that is derived from the data source, the semantic model including metadata about the attribute of data fields and/or data values in the data source and including metadata of one or more synonyms of the attribute;
forming a second expression based on the first expression and the first information;
retrieving one or more data sets from the data source according to the second expression; and
generating and displaying a data visualization of the retrieved one or more data sets.