Building AI agents to query your databases

You are doing a lot of the work a semantic layer would do for you. I wonder if you would have better luck having the LLM talk to a semantic layer instead of directly to the database.

A bit of a joke here:

It solves 100% cases where some manager requests dashboard never to look at it again after one day.

Using a semantic layer is the cleanest way to have a human in the loop. A human can validate and create all important metrics (e.g. what does "monthly active users" really mean) then an LLM can use that metric definition whenever asked for MAU.

With a semantic layer, you get the added benefit of writing queries in JSON instead of raw SQL. LLM's are much more consistent at writing a small JSON vs. hundreds of lines of SQL.

We[0] use cube[1] for this. It's the best open source semantic layer, but there's a couple closed source options too.

0 - https://www.definite.app/

1 - https://cube.dev/

Hi, you are right that things can go sideways fast. In practice, the data that the typical employee needs is also quite simple. So there is definitely a very nice fit for this kind of product with a large number of use-case that we do see provide a lot of value internally for employees (self access to data) and data scientist (reducing loads).

For complex queries/use-cases, we generally instead push our users to create agents that assist them in shaping SQL directly, instead of going directly from text to result/graphs. Pushes them to think more about correctness while still saving them tone of time (the agent has access to the table schemas etc...), but not a good fit for non technical people of course.

It does require writing good instructions for the LLM to properly use the tables, and it works best if you carefully pick the tables that your agent is allowed to use beforehand. We have many users that use it for every day work with real data (definitely not toy problems).

This is really interesting. At my previous company, I built a data lakehouse for operational reporting with recency prioritization (query only recent data, archive the rest). While there was no LLM integration when I left, I've learned from former colleagues that they've since added a lightweight LLM layer on top (though I suspect Dustt's implementation is more comprehensive).

Our main requirement was querying recent operational data across daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly timeframes. The data sources included OLTP binlogs, OLAP views, SFDC, and about 15 other marketing platforms. We implemented a datalake with our own query and archival layers. This approach worked well for queries like "conversion rate per channel this quarter" where we needed broad data coverage (all 17 integrations) but manageable depth (reasonable row scanned).

This architecture also enabled quick solutions for additional use cases, like on-the-fly SFDC data enrichment that our analytics team could handle independently. Later, I learned the team integrated LLMs as they began dumping OLAP views inside the datalake for different query types, and eventually replaced our original query layer with DuckDB.

I believe approaches like these (what I had done as in house solution and what definite may be doing more extensively) are data and query-pattern focused first. While it might initially seem like overkill, this approach can withstand organizational complexity challenges - with LLMs serving primarily as an interpretation layer. From skimming the Dustt blog, their approach is refreshing, though it seems their product was built primarily for LLM integration rather than focusing first on data management and scale. They likely have internal mechanisms to handle various use cases that weren't detailed in the blog.

Thank you.

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