1. A computer-implemented method comprising: causing an answering system to receive a user query posed in a natural language to a database; causing the answering system to derive semantics from the user query and create a parse graph, wherein the semantics comprise a first dimension and a second dimension; perform normalization and transformation of the semantics; imposing constraints on the semantics to create artifacts by proposing a related measure connecting the first dimension and the second dimension in a database table; mapping the artifacts into a plurality of structured queries; ranking the plurality of structured queries according to a first scoring function considering a selectivity of the related measure, and a second scoring function considering a complexity of the structured query such that a more complex query structure indicates a higher relevance, a third scoring function comprising a confidence measure based on text retrieval metrics, and a fourth scoring function comprising a popularity of the first dimension, the second dimension, and the related measure; and executing the plurality of structured queries on the database according to the ranking.
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: causing an answering system to receive a user query posed in a natural language to a database; causing the answering system to derive semantics from the user query and create a parse graph, wherein the semantics comprise a first dimension and a second dimension; perform normalization and transformation of the semantics; imposing constraints on the semantics to create artifacts by proposing a related measure connecting the first dimension and the second dimension in a database table; mapping the artifacts into a plurality of structured queries; ranking the plurality of structured queries according to a first scoring function considering a selectivity of the related measure, and a second scoring function considering a complexity of the structured query such that a more complex query structure indicates a higher relevance, a third scoring function comprising a confidence measure based on text retrieval metrics, and a fourth scoring function comprising a popularity of the first dimension, the second dimension, and the related measure; and executing the plurality of structured queries on the database according to the ranking. 7. A method as in claim 1 wherein each of the plurality of structured queries comprises a data source, a set of dimensions and measures, and a set of filters.