Database querying is still based on programming languages. The user must learn the database programming language and the corresponding database schemata before asking a data question to the system. Programming languages use either the classical textual style or some kind of visualisation for queries (e.g., query-by-example or VisualSQL). Conceptual queries are first to be specified at the conceptual level, using concepts and languages easily understood by the application domain experts who must be qualified to validate the query.

Question verbalisation is already a difficult cognitive problem. Data understanding and assessment is not less difficult for casual users of database infrastructures. The formalisation of such questions within a programming language environment might be too difficult for these users. The evaluation whether a formal query corresponds to the question the user has had in mind is a very difficult task.

This paper focuses on the verbalisation of questions to a database system without profound knowledge of SQL or other query languages. We propose a six-step procedure for query verbalisation in this paper. This procedure is based on query and answer forms which can be mapped to database queries in dependence on the database schema and on the profile of the database system.