US Patent 12067037 System, method, and computer program for performing natural language searches for documents in a database using alternate search suggestions

A system, method, and computer program are provided for performing natural language searches for documents in a database using alternate search suggestions. The system receives a user's natural language query to search a document database and processes the natural language query to map natural language terms to terms for a database query. The system identifies a term in the user's natural language query that the system is unable to map to terms for a database query and determines that the unmapped term is a candidate document keyword term. The system provides an alternate natural language input search suggestion and, in response to user acceptance, the system creates a database query that includes a metadata subquery with database metadata terms and a document keyword subquery that includes the candidate document keyword term. The system resolves the user's natural language query by performing metadata and document keyword searches on the document database.