SQL is easy. Knowledge management is hard. Does the LLM know that there was a bug in June that changed the data? Does it know that this one column is improperly named and confusing? Does it know that you recently released a mobile app the data from which is in a different table?
No, of course not, those things are never explicitly documented and so are invisible to an LLM.
If it was that easy you wouldn't have a tradition of devs trying for any alternative.
There's obviously a use case for this sort of product, objections appealing to the ease of use of any technical language or toolset are unlikely to be convincing to the majority who are not comfortable with it.
When your only tool is a FOR loop hammer, every set based operation frustratingly looks less like a nail than a screw.
It takes a lot of training to get a team member up to speed - with the same amount of training, do you think an LLM can compete?
With a human in the loop, even providing a "mostly" correct SQL that takes a swing at the correct joins between relevant tables reduces the data practitioner's work significantly. Of course, as more questions are asked, the tool gets better at writing the SQL better. Almost like a human in a Database Management and SQL class...
No. Does "the SQL"? Also no.
That requirement falls on the person using the tool, doesn't it?
This only works if you have perfect data engineering. But if you have perfect data engineering, point and click tools like Looker will work too.
I did an NL-to-SQL startup, but now I think is a much better time to do this.