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Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

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Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#21

Post by thedynamicduo »

This looks really cool, can't wait to check it out. The problem I've seen with other tools I've tinkered with is that they do well with simple stuff like:

"what are my latest orders" -> select * from orders where user_id=x order by created_date

But really struggle when you have a complex schema that requires joins, and basically has no support when you are describing something that needs outer joins or the like. Would be great to hear if DataHerald has cracked that nut or if it's still a challenge for you as well (no judgement if it is, it seems like a hard problem).

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#22

Post by robertlagrant »

bobismyuncle wrote: post #5

Curious why you decided to open source your entire product. Are you moving to an open core model? I’d expect in that case that much of 2, 3 & 4 would have stayed closed. Would be grateful if you can share your reasoning

This is often the move when the team's spent the money developing something and now the end's in sight, so they want the chance to leave and take the code with them.

Don't know if this is that at all, but it's always worth considering.

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#23

Post by arrosenberg »

saigal wrote: post #20
arrosenberg wrote: post #18

I still wonder who the audience is for tools like this. The website posits you can answer data questions without going through an analyst, but the role of the analyst is not to be a SQL whisperer for PMs and Executives - it is to be an expert in the model and the data. A data warehouse of any real scale is going to have some amount of issues - anomalous data, different interpretations of the same numbers - how does t…

the target audience is developers who wish to embed text to SQL functionality into their own products. the target audience is less the 'internal use case' (i.e. a data analyst) and more about letting external users do things they couldn't do before. a good example is payroll software where this type of technology can allow users to pull reports.

I agree that is a more reasonable use-case. The readme for this tool seems geared toward the business of answering business questions.

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#24

Post by saigal »

thedynamicduo wrote: post #21

This looks really cool, can't wait to check it out. The problem I've seen with other tools I've tinkered with is that they do well with simple stuff like: "what are my latest orders" -> select * from orders where user_id=x order by created_date But really struggle when you have a complex schema that requires joins, and basically has no support when you are describing something that needs outer joins or the like. Woul…

great question, and the one that we get the most :-) this is precisely why we created Dataherald. Off the shelf LLMs can handle a single table and simple questions. Dataherald's quest is to ultimately provide enterprise-grade text to SQL, where complex schema and joins are present. it does take some training, but we've found that it can handle situations such as the one you mention above.

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#25

Post by numlocked »

aazo11 wrote: post #8
akch wrote: post #6

Not finding the license anywhere. Which one have you chosen?

Hi -- the license is Apache 2.0

Is that documented somewhere? The "contributing" link in the readme also 404s. I would definitely need to understand the licensing and how contributing works before I could consider integrating this (and I would definitely consider it!). Cool stuff.

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#27

Post by saigal »

numlocked wrote: post #25
aazo11 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi -- the license is Apache 2.0

Is that documented somewhere? The "contributing" link in the readme also 404s. I would definitely need to understand the licensing and how contributing works before I could consider integrating this (and I would definitely consider it!). Cool stuff.

We'll make the licensing more visible. Stay tuned in a few minutes.

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#28

Post by greenavocado »

saigal wrote: post #20
arrosenberg wrote: post #18

I still wonder who the audience is for tools like this. The website posits you can answer data questions without going through an analyst, but the role of the analyst is not to be a SQL whisperer for PMs and Executives - it is to be an expert in the model and the data. A data warehouse of any real scale is going to have some amount of issues - anomalous data, different interpretations of the same numbers - how does t…

the target audience is developers who wish to embed text to SQL functionality into their own products. the target audience is less the 'internal use case' (i.e. a data analyst) and more about letting external users do things they couldn't do before. a good example is payroll software where this type of technology can allow users to pull reports.

> the target audience is developers who wish to embed text to SQL functionality into their own products

Who is asking?

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#29

Post by munk-a »

threesevenths wrote: post #12
akch wrote: post #6

Not finding the license anywhere. Which one have you chosen?

Guess it's public domain since there is no license

Just for future reference - if no license is given it's unlicensed. Licensing defaults closed for extremely good reasons - that's one of the reasons why github had a strong push for users to assign appropriate licensing documents to repositories a while back and declare those licenses in machine readable forms (if applicable).

Re: Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product

#30

Post by saigal »

munk-a wrote: post #29
threesevenths wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess it's public domain since there is no license

Just for future reference - if no license is given it's unlicensed. Licensing defaults closed for extremely good reasons - that's one of the reasons why github had a strong push for users to assign appropriate licensing documents to repositories a while back and declare those licenses in machine readable forms (if applicable).

Apache 2.0.
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