SQLucid: Grounding Natural Language Database Queries with Interactive Explanations

TL;DR

SQLucid is an interactive user interface that enhances natural language database querying by providing visual aids, intermediate results, and editable explanations, significantly improving user understanding and task accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interface combining visual correspondence, intermediate results, and editable explanations to improve natural language database query interactions.

Findings

Significant improvement in task completion accuracy.

Increased user confidence in query formulation.

Validated through user studies and experiments.

Abstract

Though recent advances in machine learning have led to significant improvements in natural language interfaces for databases, the accuracy and reliability of these systems remain limited, especially in high-stakes domains. This paper introduces SQLucid, a novel user interface that bridges the gap between non-expert users and complex database querying processes. SQLucid addresses existing limitations by integrating visual correspondence, intermediate query results, and editable step-by-step SQL explanations in natural language to facilitate user understanding and engagement. This unique blend of features empowers users to understand and refine SQL queries easily and precisely. Two user studies and one quantitative experiment were conducted to validate SQLucid's effectiveness, showing significant improvement in task completion accuracy and user confidence compared to existing interfaces. Our code is available at https://github.com/magic-YuanTian/SQLucid.