Although the importance of discourse processing for information extraction has been emphasized in the Message Understanding Conferences , no system presented has satisfactorily addressed the issue. Furthermore, the processor segments the discourse to isolate portions of text relevant to a particular conceptual relationship. A system must fill a generic template with information extracted from the text by a fully automated process. The template is composed of several objects, each containing several slots. Slots may contain pointers to related objects .
Extracted information is to be stored in an object-oriented database.
In the joint ventures domain, the task is to extract information concerning joint venture relationships which organizations form and dissolve. Entity objects contain pointers to other objects such as person and facility objects, as shown in Figure . In the microelectronics domain, extraction focuses on layering, lithography, etching, and packaging processes in semiconductor manufacturing for microchip fabrication. The entities extracted include manufacturer, distributor, and user, in addition to detailed manufacturing information such as materials used and microchip specifications such as wafer size and device speed. The microelectronics template structure is similar to that of the joint ventures but has fewer objects and slots.