Abstract

Here we propose new heuristics that assist the semi-automated generation of Entity-Relationship (ER) diagrams for database modelling from a natural language description and describe the implementation of such a system called ER-Converter. Though this is a semi-automatic transformation process, ER-Converter aims to require minimal human intervention during the process. ER-Converter has been evaluated in blind trials against a set of database problems. ER-Converter has an average of 95% recall and 82% precision. The evaluation results are discussed and demonstrate that ER-Converter could be used, for example, within the domain model of a multimedia intelligent tutoring system, designed to assist in the learning and teaching of databases.