Entity Name Synonyms
Use a name synonym to specify "Bill" as a synonym for "William" (an instance of the entity author_name). That allows users to ask a question such as "How many books did Bill write?" and have that interpreted as "How many books does the author named William write?"
A name synonym only takes effect if the question is about names of entities. For example, it would not cause the question, "Who did we send a bill to last week?" to be interpreted as, "Who did we send a william to last week?"
Likewise, a product name may be stored in the database as "chair, wicker," but users may typically refer to it as a "wicker chair." Similarly, "Big Apple" may appear in the database as "New York."
Specifying a name synonym is useful, too, if an unknown word is stored in the database but its value has not been added to the model. This can occur when:
- None of the entities' values are being added because the Add values of entity to model check box in the Entity/New Entity dialog box was not selected.
- The number of values being added is restricted to limit the size of the model, and the specific value was not among those added. Increase the number of values being added by entering a number in the Words per entity box on the Data Connection tab of the Project Properties dialog box.
Caution Defining a global synonym using the Read Synonym option in the New Dictionary Entry dialog box overrides any synonyms you set using the Name Synonyms tab. For example, if you set the Read Synonym option to read "ship" as "boat," the question, "How many boats sailed last week?" is interpreted as "How many ships sailed last week?" But the question, "How many widgets did we ship last week?" is incorrectly interpreted as "How many widgets did we boat last week?" To avoid this error, specify a regular entity synonym with Entity/New Entity dialog box that sets "ship" as a synonym of boat. This specifies that "ship" is a synonym of "boat" only when the question is about boats.
See Also
Creating an English Query Model
Defining Entities in an English Query Model