Maybe it's the project I am working on but right now I see the ideal search interface to be something like an OWL class axiom, that is, I am searching for instances of a class that has the following restrictions
* subclass of Actor
* subclass of Singer
* has been in at least 7 movies
* was born after December 3, 1980
* has been married to at most 3 other people
these can be intersected, unioned, complemented, etc.
There is no good solution for the cultural problem that a written language is somehow unsuitable for end users. but personally I have spent way too many hours trying to make a search interface only to realize at the end that not only is my interface complicated and hard to use it still has only a fraction of the descriptive power a sql query has. At times I am tempted to make full use of the built in database permissions and let the user just type queries directly. but this suggestion is always vetoed.
