Named Entity Recognition 26.3
Named Entity Recognition User and Programming Guide

# Named Entity Recognition Architecture

You run Named Entity Recognition by using a Named Entity Recognition engine. This engine uses the Named Entity Recognition grammars to process text and return the matched entities.

The following diagram shows the use of grammars in a Named Entity Recognition engine.

The standard grammar files are a wide range of ECR files that OpenText provides in your Named Entity Recognition installation (see Standard Grammar – Compiled). You can use these files as they are, or extend them by creating a grammar XML file that includes them. You can also create your own user grammar files from scratch.

You compile XML grammar files into ECR by using the edktool command-line tool. For more information see Compile and Test Grammars.

NOTE: Named Entity Recognition can also use XML grammar files directly (that is, without compiling them to ECR files). However, in most cases OpenText recommends that you compile your grammars to improve performance.

How you use the Named Entity Recognition engine depends on the way you call Named Entity Recognition. For example, you can:

- Use Named Entity Recognition as part of a Knowledge Discovery ingestion process.

  In this case, you use Connectors to retrieve documents from your repositories and send them to NiFi Ingest. NiFi Ingest performs any processing on the documents, including sending text to the Named Entity Recognition engine. The Named Entity Recognition engine sends back the entity matches, which NiFi can add to new fields in your Knowledge Discovery documents. For more information, refer to the NiFi Ingest Getting Started Guide.

  The following diagram shows this process.

  TIP: This process is similar if you use Connector Framework Server (CFS) to ingest your documents.

- Use Named Entity Recognition Server to run Named Entity Recognition.

  In this case, you send your text in ACI actions (from a front-end application or Web browser) to the Named Entity Recognition Server, which runs the Named Entity Recognition engine that processes the text and returns the matched entities. See Use Named Entity Recognition Server.

- Call Named Entity Recognition directly by using the Named Entity Recognition SDK.

  In this case, your custom application sends text directly to the Named Entity Recognition engine, which then returns the matched entities. For more information, see Deploy Named Entity Recognition SDK.

You can also run Named Entity Recognition by using the edktool command-line tool. This method can be useful for testing your grammars or entities when you make modifications (see Compile and Test Grammars). However, OpenText recommends that you do not use edktool as part of a production system.

TIP: If you do not know which Named Entity Recognition package is best for your use case, see Decide Which Named Entity Recognition Product to Use.

Copyright 2013-2026 Open Text
Version 26.3 | Last updated July 2026

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Product: Knowledge Discovery Named Entity Recognition 26.3

Topic Title: Named Entity Recognition Architecture