Qanary - A methodology for vocabulary-driven open question answering systems

It is very challenging to access the knowledge expressed within (big) data sets. Question answering (QA) aims at making sense out of data via a simple-to-use interface. However, QA systems are very complex and earlier approaches are mostly singular and monolithic implementations for QA in specific domains. Therefore, it is cumbersome and inefficient to design and implement new or improved approaches, in particular as many components are not reusable. Hence, there is a strong need for enabling best-of-breed QA systems, where the best performing components are combined, aiming at the best quality achievable in the given domain. Taking into account the high variety of functionality that might be of use within a QA system and therefore reused in new QA systems, we provide an approach driven by a core QA vocabulary that is aligned to existing, powerful ontologies provided by domain-specific communities.