An Interactive Approach to Generating SQL Queries from Natural Language

In this thesis, we contribute nalini, an natural-language based interactive interface for SQL query generation. Motivated by a lack of usability of existing systems, nalini was built with the intention of using it for complex query generation. The interface allows users to use a natural language and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Durvasula, Ramya
Other Authors: Solar-Lezama, Armando
Format: Thesis
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2022
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/143192
Description
Summary:In this thesis, we contribute nalini, an natural-language based interactive interface for SQL query generation. Motivated by a lack of usability of existing systems, nalini was built with the intention of using it for complex query generation. The interface allows users to use a natural language and mathematical operations with a minimal structure. We evaluated nalini with a first-use study with five participants, where participants were asked to generate queries from the TPC-H decision support benchmark. Our study showed that users were able to use nalini to generate complex queries, and points to promising areas of future work.