Although there have been many experimental systems for natural-language access to databases, with some now going into actual use, many problems in this area remain to be solved. The purpose of this panel is to put some of those problems before the conference. The panel's motivation stems partly from the fact that, too often in the past, discussion of natural-language access to databases has focused, at the expense of the underlying issues, on what particular systems can or cannot do. To avoid this, the discussions of the present panel will be organized around issues rather than systems. .
