There was just no way to win. Deere & Co. was storing human resources information for more than 12,000 salaried U.S. employees on its mainframe, but only a handful of business users knew enough structured query language (SQL) to pose useful questions. To make data more accessible, Deere installed software that let PC users extract information by clicking on canned queries. But the more information the users got, the more they wanted--far too much to provide simply by adding additional canned queries. Deere went one step further, installing an English language query tool so that nearly 100 executives can enter just about any question they have about the staff of the heavy equipment maker's domestic operations.

"You ask a question in English, it gives you an answer," says James McGlaughlin, a systems analyst and member of the group that runs the HR database at the company's headquarters in Moline, Ill. He doesn't force people to use the product, English Wizard from Linguistic Technology Corp. in Littleton, Mass. Rather the product's use and popularity have spread by word of mouth to vice presidents, executive secretaries and even the CEO. "An executive may be in another executive's office when he sees it being used, and then he wants it," says McGlaughlin.

Corporate America's databases are rich in information that most mortals can't mine because they don't speak the language, typically SQL. English language querying, also known as natural language querying, is one way to solve the problem. Competitive advantage increasingly depends on a company's ability to make better decisions faster, and the old method of calling the systems analyst to pose a query isn't fast enough. The new generation of point-and-click tools with preformed queries is useful, but they require extensive support and make executives thirsty for even more information. They also don't give much flexibility to the executive searching for an unexpected trend.

The Internet also drives demand for easier database access. In companies with Web-based intranets, employees have begun to expect increasing access to information of all kinds. Both of the natural language query tools on the market, English Query from Microsoft Corp. and English Wizard from Linguistic Technology, can access databases from internal or external Web sites.

"Natural language query technology is underused," observes Jackie Fenn, a vice president and research director in advanced technologies at Gartner Group Inc. She says the technology offers its greatest potential when users are highly knowledgeable about the data but don't know the query language. "Someone in a warehouse who has to be concerned with supplies--that's the kind of user ripe for this tool," Fenn says.