How to use sequel.ai to convert natural language queries into SQL queries
Tags: javascript, sql, webdev, openai
Published: 2023-03-24 03:07:07

Sequel.ai is an application that allows you to query a database using natural language instead of SQL. It uses a library called sequelAIze.js that converts natural language queries into SQL queries, and then executes them on a specific database. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use sequel.ai to perform some basic database operations.

**Step 1: Set up your database connection**

Before you can use sequel.ai, you need to have a database that you want to query. You can use any relational database engine that supports SQL, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, etc. You also need to configure your database connection settings in the config.js file. This file contains the following parameters:

- host: The hostname or IP address of your database server
- user: The username for your database
- password: The password for your database
- database: The name of your database
- dialect: The type of your database engine (e.g., mysql, postgres, sqlite)

For example, if you want to connect to a MySQL database named testdb on localhost with the username root and password 1234, you would set the parameters as follows:

```js
module.exports = {
  host: 'localhost',
  user: 'root',
  password: '1234',
  database: 'testdb',
  dialect: 'mysql'
};
```

**Step 2: Run the application**

To run the application, you need to have Node.js installed on your system. You can download it from https://nodejs.org/en/. Then, open a terminal and navigate to the folder where you downloaded or cloned sequel.ai from GitHub². To install the dependencies, run:

```bash
npm install
```

To start the application, run:

```bash
npm start
```

You should see a message like this:

```text
Server listening on port 3000!
```

This means that the application is running on http://localhost:3000/. You can open this URL in your browser and see the interface of sequel.ai.

**Step 3: Query your database using natural language**

The interface of sequel.ai consists of two parts: a text input where you can type your natural language query and a table where you can see the results of your query. For example, if you have a table named users with columns id, name and email in your testdb database, you can type something like this in the text input:

```text
show me all users
```

Then press Enter or click on Submit Query button. You should see something like this in the table:

| id | name | email |
|----|------|-------|
| 1 | Alice | alice@example.com |
| 2 | Bob | bob@example.com |
| 3 | Charlie | charlie@example.com |

You can also use more complex queries with filters and aggregations. For example,

```text
show me users whose name starts with A
```

will return only Alice's record.

```text
count how many users there are
```

will return

| count |
|-------|
| 3 |

You can also combine multiple conditions using AND or OR keywords. For example,

```text
show me users whose name contains B or email ends with com 
```

will return Bob's and Charlie's records.

Sequel.ai supports various natural language expressions for querying databases. You can find more examples and documentation on https://github.com/trinly01/sequel.ai/blob/master/README.md.

**Conclusion**

In this tutorial, you learned how to use sequel.ai to convert natural language queries into SQL queries and execute them on a specific database. Sequel.ai is an easy and intuitive way to interact with databases without writing SQL code. It is powered by sequelAIze.js library which uses machine learning models to parse natural language queries and generate SQL queries.

If you want to learn more about sequelAIze.js library or contribute to its development,
you can visit its GitHub repository at https://github.com/trinly01/sequelAIze.js.

If you want to learn more about Sequel¹, which is a web-based professional video editor powered by machine learning,
you can visit its website at https://runwayml.com/sequel/.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial article about this page!😊

Source: Conversation with Bing, 3/10/2023(1) GitHub - trinly01/sequel.ai: This application is designed to convert .... https://github.com/trinly01/sequel.ai Accessed 3/10/2023.
(2) Introducing Sequel: The Next Chapter of Video Editing - Runway. https://runwayml.com/blog/introducing-sequel/ Accessed 3/10/2023.
(3) Professional Online Video Editing Software | Runway. https://runwayml.com/sequel/ Accessed 3/10/2023.