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Getting AI to write good SQL

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Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#291

Post by Workaccount2 »

jeltz wrote: post #260
randomNumber7 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but why is then everyone on HN claiming LLMs can code on expert level?

Because the people claiming so are actually bad at coding. I suspect a lot of them actually work in non-coding positions. And while I can for sure see how LLMs can be useful, they code at the level of a junior dev fresh out of college, if I am being generous.

Most of the software I use feels like it is coded by a junior dev fresh out of college anyway. Slow, buggy, bloated, gobbles memory...

Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#293

Post by tmpz22 »

Is it me or is the grammar of this article really poor:

> If the user is a technical analyst or a developer asking a vague question, giving them a reasonable, but perhaps not 100% correct SQL query is a good starting point

> Out of the box, LLMs are particularly good at tasks like creative writing, summarizing or extracting information from documents.

I don't -think- this was written by an LLM, but it really pulls me out of the technical article.

Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#294

Post by sgarland »

roywiggins wrote: post #79
deadbabe wrote: post #67

All this LLM written SQL stuff sounds great until you realize if you don’t really know SQL you won’t be able to debug or fix any broken SQL an LLM generates. Thus, this is mainly just a tool for true experts to do less work and still get paid the same, not a tool for beginners to rise to the level of experts.

It depends, sometimes just feeding back broken SQL with "that didn't return any rows, can you fix it" and it comes up with something that works. Or "you're looking at the wrong entity, look at this table instead" or whatever, without knowing how to write competent SQL. Obviously being able to at least read a bit of SQL and understanding the basic idea of relational databases helps loads.

> It depends, sometimes just feeding back broken SQL with "that didn't return any rows, can you fix it" and it comes up with something that works.

But how do you know if the SQL is correct, or just happened to return results that match for one particular case?

Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#295

Post by bdangubic »

sgarland wrote: post #294
roywiggins wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends, sometimes just feeding back broken SQL with "that didn't return any rows, can you fix it" and it comes up with something that works. Or "you're looking at the wrong entity, look at this table instead" or whatever, without knowing how to write competent SQL. Obviously being able to at least read a bit of SQL and understanding the basic idea of relational databases helps loads.

> It depends, sometimes just feeding back broken SQL with "that didn't return any rows, can you fix it" and it comes up with something that works. But how do you know if the SQL is correct, or just happened to return results that match for one particular case?

how do you know SQL is correct if you write it yourself or another teamate of yours?

Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#297

Post by lerp-io »

mykowebhn wrote: post #199

I understand from a technical POV how this could be considered great news. But I don't see how this is good news at all from a societal POV. The last 15 or so years has seen an unprecedented rise in salaries for engineers, especially software engineers. This has brought an interest in the profession from people who would normally not have considered SW as a profession. I think this is both good and bad. It has brough…

Aren't programmers supposed to build digital products for end users and this just makes it faster? more like POV from a person who got hired...EOD you need to think what you are doing for the bigger world and what the world can do for you because that is what your end user - your boss - is thinking. people just like to swim in their lane in their own little B2B world (i do X = i get Y) without ever stopping to think about anything except what is in front of them

Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#298

Post by navaed01 »

“Metrics: We combine user metrics and offline eval metrics, and employ both human and automated evaluation, particularly using LLM-as-a-judge techniques”.

I’m curious to know what people are doing to measure whether the customer got what they were looking for. Thumbs up/down seems insufficient to me.

The ability of the LLM to perform purely depends on having good knowledge of what is going to get asked and how, which is more complex than it sounds

What techniques are people having success with?

Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#299

Post by neRok »

neRok wrote: post #285
pcblues wrote: post #246

Can someone please answer these questions because I still think AI stinks of a false promise of determinable accuracy: Do you need an expert to verify if the answer from AI is correct? How is it time saved refining prompts instead of SQL? Is it typing time? How can you know the results are correct if you aren't able to do it yourself? Why should a junior (sorcerer's apprentice) be trusted in charge of using AI? No ma…

I've recently started asking the free version of chat-gpt questions on how I might do various things, and it's working great for me - but also my questions come from a POV of having existing "domain knowledge". So for example, I was mucking around with ffmpeg and mkv files, and instead of searching for the answer to my thought-bubble (which I doubt would have been "quick" or "productive" on google), I straight up ask…

[Going to give myself a self-reply here, but what-ev's. This is how I talk to chat-gpt, FYI]... So I happened to be shopping for a cheap used car recently, and we have these ~15 year old Ford SUV's in Aus that are comfortable, but heavy and thirsty. Also, they come in AWD and RWD versions. So I had a thought bubble about using an AWD "gearbox" in a RWD vehicle whilst connecting an electric motor to the AWD front "output", so that it could work as an assist. Here was my first question to chat-gpt about it;

  > I'm wondering if it would be beneficial to add an electric-assist motor to an existing petrol vehicle. There are some 2010 era SUV's that have relatively uneconomical petrol engines, which may be good candidates. That is because some of them are RWD, whilst some are AWD. The AWD gearbox and transfer case could be fitted to the RWD, leaving the transfers front "output" unconnected. Could an electric motor then be connected to this shaft, hence making it an input?
It gave a decent answer, but it was focused on the "front diff" and "front driveshaft" and stuff like that. It hadn't quite grasped what I was implying, although it knew what it was talking about! It brought up various things that I knew were relevant (the "domain knowledge" aspect), so I brought some of those things in my reply (like about the viscous coupling and torque split);

  > I mentioned the AWD gearbox+transfer into a RWD-only vehicle, thus keeping it RWD only. Thus both petrol+electric would be "driving" at the same time, but I imagine the electric would reduce the effort required from the petrol. The transfer case is a simple "differential" type, without any control or viscous couplings or anything - just simple gear ratio differences that normally torque-split 35% to the front and 65% to the rear. So I imagine the open-differential would handle the 2 different input speeds could "combine" to 1 output?
That was enough to "fix" its answer (see below). And IMO, it was a good answer!

I'm posting this because I read a thread on here yesterday/2-days-ago about people stuggling with their AI's context/conversation getting "poisoned" (their word). So whilst I don't use AI that much, I also haven't had issue with it, and maybe that's because of that way I converse with it?

---------

"Edit": Well, the conversation was too long for HN, so I put it here - https://gist.github.com/neRok00/53e97988e1a3e41f3a688a75fe3b...

Re: Getting AI to write good SQL

#300

Post by JodieBenitez »

jeanloolz wrote: post #247
JodieBenitez wrote: post #158

Wait... people need AI to write SQL ?

A junior in SQL would need AI to write things they're not sure about, the same way stackoverflow has helped us for many many years before AI. A senior in sql, and in fact any languages, would use AI to be accelerated (I know I do).

I see this comparison too often and I don't think it's fair. Stackoverflow has peer review.
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