Search-based detection, link, and acquisition of data

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a computing device, a natural language query;

determining, by the computing device and based on the natural language query, a set of search criteria;

determining, by the computing device, a respective coverage score for each of a plurality of data sets and for each of one or more combinations of two or more data sets based at least in part on matches between the set of search criteria and attributes of the plurality of data sets and of the one or more combinations of two or more data sets, wherein the respective coverage score for a respective one of the plurality of data sets corresponds to a percentage of the natural language query that is bound to one or more attributes of the respective one of the plurality of data sets, and wherein the respective coverage score for a respective one of the one or more combinations of two or more data sets corresponds to the percentage of the natural language query that is bound to one or more attributes of the respective one of the one or more combinations of two or more data sets;

in response to determining a combination of two or more data sets out of the one or more combinations of two or more data sets that are associated with the natural language query based at least in part on the respective coverage score of the combination of two or more data sets, building, by the computing device, an on-the-fly query to join two or more data sets making up the combination of two or more data sets, including joining at least one of: two or more rows and two or more columns of the two or more data sets, to produce a joint data set;

executing, by the computing device, the on-the-fly data source query to retrieve the joint data set from the one or more data sources; and

outputting, by the computing device, a representation of the joint data set for display at a display device.

2. The method of claim 1 ,

wherein the matches between the set of search criteria and the attributes of the plurality of data sets include one or more of: a literal match, a value match, a semantic match, or a partial name match, and

wherein the attributes of the plurality of data sets include one or more of: semantic metadata, lexical clues, sample values, or numeric statistics.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

associating, by the computing device, an indication of matching strength with each of the matches; and

ranking, by the computing device, the matches based on the respective indication of matching strength associated with each of the matches.

4. The method of claim 3 , further comprising:

determining, by the computing device, the respective coverage score for each of the one or more combinations of two or more data sets of the plurality of data sets based at least in part on the ranking of the matches.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein:

building, by the computing device, the on-the-fly data source query to join the two or more data sets making up the combination of two or more data sets further comprises determining one or more join paths of data items between the two or more data sets; and

building, by the computing device, the on-the-fly data source query to join the two or more data sets making up the combination of two or more data sets further comprises building the on-the-fly data source query to join the two or more data sets based at least in part on the one or more join paths.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the one or more join paths includes value overlaps in the two or more data sets.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the one or more join paths includes matching data items in the two or more data sets.

8. The method of claim 5 , wherein determining the one or more join paths is based at least in part on concept-specific rules.

9. The method of claim 5 , wherein determining the one or more join paths further comprises excluding metric data items from the one or more join paths.

10. The method of claim 5 , wherein determining the one or more join paths of the data items further comprises adjusting the one or more join paths based at least in part on user input.