Conversing with databases: Practical Natural Language Querying

AbstractIn this work, we designed, developed and released in production DataQue – a hybrid NLQ (Natural Language Querying) system for conversational DB querying. We address multiple practical problems that are not accounted for in public Text-to-SQL solutions – numerous complex implied conditions in user questions, jargon and abbreviations, custom calculations, non-SQL operations, a need to inject all those into pipeline fast and to have guaranteed parsing results for demanding users, cold-start problem. The DataQue processing pipeline for Text-to-SQL translation consists of 10-15 model-based and rule-based components that allows to tightly control the processing.