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Getting AI to write good SQL

(cloud.google.com)
474 points richards | 4 comments | 16 May 25 21:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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pcblues ◴[17 May 25 13:21 UTC] No.44014141[source]▶
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 matter the domain, from art to code to business rules, you still need an expert to verify the results. Would they (and their company) be in a better place to design a solution to a problem themselves, knowing their own assumptions? Or just check of a list of happy-path results without a FULL knowledge of the underlying design? This is not just a change from hand-crafting to line-production, it's a change from deterministic problem-solving to near-enough is good enough, sold as the new truth in problem-solving. It smells wrong.

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1. herrkanin ◴[17 May 25 13:27 UTC] No.44014181[source]▶
Same reason as why it's harder to solve a sudoku than it is to verify its correctness.
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2. pcblues ◴[17 May 25 13:33 UTC] No.44014214[source]▶
I should have made my post clearer :)

There isn't one perfect solution to SQL queries against complex systems.

A suduko has one solution.

A reasonably well-optimised SQL solution is what the good use of SQL tries to achieve. And it can be the difference between a total lock-up and a fast running of a script that keeps the rest of a complex system from falling over.

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3. raincole ◴[17 May 25 13:42 UTC] No.44014280[source]▶
The number of solutions doesn't matter though. You can easily design a sudoku game that has multiple solutions, but it's still easier to verify a given solution than to solve it from scratch.

It's not even about whether or not the number of solutions is limited. A math problem can have unlimited amount of proofs (if we allow arbitrarily long proofs), but it's still easier to verify one than to come up with one.

Of course writing SQL isn't necessarily comparable to sudoku. But the difference, in the context of verifiability, is definitely not "SQL has no single solution."

4. Workaccount2 ◴[17 May 25 14:55 UTC] No.44014774[source]▶
If the current state of software is any indication, experts don't care much about optimization either.