Numerous systems have been built since then, aimed at applications such as navy data on ships and their deployment (Ladder: Hendrix et al.  1978), land-use planning (Damerau 1981), geographic QA (Chat-80: Pereira &amp; Warren 1982), retrieval of company records and product records for insurance companies, oil companies, manufacturers, retailers, banks, etc. (Intellect: Harris 1984), compilation of statistical data concerning customers, services, assets, etc., of a company (Cercone et al. 1993), and many more (e.g., see Androutsopoulos &amp; Ritchie 2000). However, the commercial impact of such systems has remained scant, because they have generally lacked the reliability and some of the functionalities of traditional db access.