Defining Data for Simulation

To help you see how rules might match text, you can run a simulation using sample data. The first step is to define the data.

Defining Data

  1. Click Define Data in the simulation pane in bottom of the Text Link Rules tab. Alternatively, if no data have been previously defined, choose Tools > Run Simulation from the menus. The Simulation Data wizard opens.
  2. Specify the data type by selecting one of the following:
    • Paste or enter text directly A text box is provided for you to paste some text from the clipboard or to manually enter the desired text to be processed. You can enter one sentence per line or use punctuation to break up the sentence such as periods or commas. Once you have entered your text, you can begin the simulation by clicking Run Simulation.
    • Specify a file data source This option indicates that you want to process a file that contains text. Click Next to proceed to the wizard step in which you can define the file to be processed. Once the file has been selected, you can begin the simulation by clicking Run Simulation. The following file types are supported: .txt and .text. The data file you choose is read 'as-is' during the simulation. The entire file is treated in the same manner as if you had connected a File List node to a Text Mining Node.
    Important: We strongly recommend that if you use a data file, ensure that the text it contains is short in order to minimize processing time. The goal of simulation is to see how a piece of text is interpreted and to understand how rules match this text. This information will help you write and edit your rules. Use the text link analysis node or run a stream with interactive session with TLA extraction enabled to obtain results for a more complete data set. This simulation is for testing and rule authoring purposes only.
  3. To begin the simulation process, click Run Simulation. A progress dialog appears. If you are in an interactive session, the extraction settings used during simulation are those currently selected in the interactive session (see Tools > Extraction Settings in the Concepts and Categories view). If you are in the Template Editor, the extraction settings used during simulation are the default extraction settings, which are the same as those shown in the Expert tab of a Text Link Analysis node. For more information, see Understanding Simulation Results.