by Emery Berger
Integrates AI into your database: automatically converts natural language queries into SQL, and then runs the SQL query. As far as we are aware, this is the first integration of LLMs to enable natural language queries into a production database manager. Currently works as an extension to SQLite3 (more to come). In addition to generating queries, SQLwrite also produces suggestions to improve query performance (e.g., creating new indices).
SQLwrite supports two AI backends:
export OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-api-key>
Get a key at: https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<your-access-key> export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<your-secret-key> export AWS_REGION=us-east-1 # optional, defaults to us-east-1
Or use the AWS credentials file (~/.aws/credentials):
[default] aws_access_key_id = <your-access-key> aws_secret_access_key = <your-secret-key>
AWS Bedrock uses Claude 3 Sonnet by default. Ensure you have enabled Claude model access in your AWS Bedrock console.
These example queries use a large SQLite database with multiple tables:
% export OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-api-key> # or use AWS credentials
% ./sqlite3 Chinook_Sqlite.sqlite
sqlite> .load sqlwrite
SQLwrite extension successfully initialized. You can now use natural language queries like "select ask('show me all artists.');".
Please report any issues to https://github.com/plasma-umass/sqlwrite/issues/new
sqlite> select ask('show me the total invoiced for all artists.'); 2328.6 [SQLwrite] translation to SQL: SELECT SUM(Total) AS total_invoiced FROM Invoice; [SQLwrite] indexing suggestions to improve the performance for this query: (1): CREATE INDEX idx_invoice_total ON Invoice (Total); (2): CREATE INDEX idx_customer_invoice ON Invoice (CustomerId);
sqlite> select ask('show me the total invoiced for all artists whose last name starts with "S"'); 306.98 [SQLwrite] translation to SQL: SELECT sum(Invoice.Total) as total_invoiced FROM Invoice JOIN Customer ON Invoice.CustomerId = Customer.CustomerId WHERE Customer.LastName LIKE 'S%' [SQLwrite] indexing suggestions to improve the performance for this query: (1): CREATE INDEX idx_invoice_customer_lastname ON Invoice (CustomerId) WHERE (CustomerId IN (SELECT CustomerId FROM Customer WHERE LastName LIKE 'S%')) (2): CREATE INDEX idx_customer_lastname ON Customer (LastName)
sqlite> select ask('give me a list of all artists (with no duplicates) whose genre is reggae'); Cidade Negra Lenny Kravitz UB40 [SQLwrite] translation to SQL: SELECT DISTINCT Artist.Name FROM Artist JOIN Album ON Album.ArtistId = Artist.ArtistId JOIN Track ON Track.AlbumId = Album.AlbumId JOIN Genre ON Track.GenreId = Genre.GenreId WHERE Genre.Name = 'Reggae'; [SQLwrite] indexing suggestions to improve the performance for this query: (1): CREATE INDEX [IFK_TrackGenreReggae] ON [Track] ([GenreId]) WHERE Name = 'Reggae';
sqlite> select ask('Haz una lista de todos los músicos cuyos nombres empiezan con la letra L'); 22|Led Zeppelin 33|Luiz Melodia 99|Legião Urbana 100|Lenny Kravitz 101|Lulu Santos 149|Lost 162|Los Lonely Boys 187|Los Hermanos 201|Luciana Souza/Romero Lubambo 223|London Symphony Orchestra & Sir Charles Mackerras 227|Luciano Pavarotti 228|Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmonic 258|Les Arts Florissants & William Christie [SQLwrite] translation to SQL: SELECT * FROM Artist WHERE Name LIKE 'L%'; [SQLwrite] indexing suggestions to improve the performance for this query: (1): CREATE INDEX [IFK_ArtistName] ON [Artist] ([Name]);
# Install dependencies (Ubuntu/Debian) sudo apt install libcurl4-gnutls-dev libssl-dev cmake # Install dependencies (Fedora/RHEL) sudo dnf install libcurl-devel openssl-devel cmake # Build with latest SQLite (fetched automatically) cmake -B build cmake --build build # Or use presets cmake --preset default && cmake --build --preset default
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
-DUSE_BUNDLED_SQLITE=ON |
Use bundled SQLite amalgamation |
-DUSE_SYSTEM_SQLITE=ON |
Use system-installed SQLite |
-DUSE_SYSTEM_FMT=ON |
Use system fmt library |
# Example: build with bundled SQLite
cmake -B build -DUSE_BUNDLED_SQLITE=ON
cmake --build buildmake
sudo apt install libcurl4-gnutls-dev
After building, run the SQLite shell with sqlwrite built-in:
cd build
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./sqlwrite-bin my_database.dbThe ask() function is automatically available - no need to load the extension:
SQLwrite extension initialized with AWS Bedrock (Claude).
Use natural language queries like: select ask('show me all artists.');
sqlite> select ask('show me all customers from France');
You can also load sqlwrite into any SQLite shell that supports extensions:
sqlite3 my_database.db
sqlite> .load /path/to/build/sqlwriteSQLwrite includes SQLite3 (https://www.sqlite.org/index.html), and is built with the assistance of several excellent libraries, whose code is (for now) included in this repository: