Structured Query Language (SQL) was designed back in the 70's as a way to programmatically extract information from databases. It is extremely powerful but as some have noted it's "a complex programming language and mastering it is not an easy task… you have to learn all about relational algebra, SQL standards, database management systems (DBMS) and other topics before you can even start writing queries.”
Given this, what if you could extract information from databases without knowing SQL, or any programming language at all? I.e., what if you could have a conversation with a database using just plain ordinary, everyday language? With the ability to converse with a database, you could retrieve information much more quickly than if you had to manually search through the data. This would allow you to extract information and insights from the data quickly and easily, without having to find a SQL programmer, or your SQL manual.
For this we have created SQL Dialogs, a feature in ODA that allows you to do exactly that: have a conversation with a database. Using voice or your keyboard, you can ask the database questions about trends, patterns, or correlations that might be difficult to identify through complicated SQL statements. By having access to real-time data and insights, you can make more informed decisions based on the most up-to-date information available. Thanks to SQL Dialogs you can use natural language queries to extract insights from data that (if you are like me) would take longer if you had to create a traditional SQL query. As an example, it’s many orders of magnitude quicker for me to ask ‘who are all our car manufacturers, how many car models do they make, and what are all their names’ than having to remember if I need an inner or outer join, what do I ‘group by’, etc.
SQL Dialogs takes everyday language, does a transformation/translation to behind-the-scenes generate the SQL needed to issue the query. To see how easy it is to use, make sure to check out this post by Daniel Teixeira.
