NLSQL: Ask Your Database Questions
in Plain English.

Most companies sit on enormous amounts of structured data — sales figures, inventory levels, customer records, financial transactions — but only a small fraction of employees can actually query it. Analysts are overloaded with ad-hoc requests. BI dashboards answer yesterday's questions, not today's. Meanwhile, decisions stall waiting for data. NLSQL removes that bottleneck by giving anyone in your organization the ability to ask a database a question in plain English and get a real answer in seconds.

What Natural-Language-to-SQL Actually Looks Like

Here's how NLSQL translates business questions into database queries:

The user sees the result — a table, a chart, or a number — directly in their chat tool. Behind the scenes, NLSQL handles schema mapping, SQL generation, query validation, execution, and result formatting.

Why Natural Language to SQL Matters Now

Enterprise BI has a decade-old problem: dashboards answer the questions you asked for last quarter, not the question your VP just raised in the meeting. The traditional fix was hiring more analysts, but that doesn't scale — and most questions don't actually warrant an analyst's time.

Large language models finally make conversational querying practical, but generic tools like ChatGPT can't safely touch your enterprise database. NLSQL closes the gap: it combines modern LLM-based query generation with enterprise-grade deployment, schema awareness, and guardrails. The result is a system your CFO's office and your compliance team can both sign off on.

Core Capabilities

• Schema-Aware Query Generation: NLSQL learns your tables, columns, relationships, and business definitions — so queries use the right fields, not hallucinated ones.
• Safe Execution: Read-only by default, with validation against destructive or unauthorized queries before anything runs.
• Multi-Database Support: Works across SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, BigQuery, Oracle, and more — customers often query multiple databases through a single NLSQL interface.
• Rich Output: Returns tables, line/bar charts, pivot summaries, or single numeric answers depending on the question.
• Chat-Native: Lives where your teams already work — Microsoft Teams, Slack, or a simple web chat — no new tool to adopt.
• Role-Based Data Access: Respects existing Azure AD permissions so users only query tables they're authorized to see.

Use Cases Across Departments

Supported Databases

NLSQL connects natively to the databases enterprises actually run:

• Microsoft SQL Server
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• MariaDB
• Oracle Database
• Snowflake
• Google BigQuery
• Amazon Redshift
• Vertica
• SAP HANA

Need a different database? NLSQL's query engine is SQL-standard-compatible — most ODBC/JDBC-accessible databases can be supported on request.

Built for Enterprise Security

• Deployed in Your Azure Tenant: Database credentials, queries, and results never leave your environment.
• Read-Only by Default: NLSQL never writes, deletes, or modifies database records unless explicitly configured to do so.
• Azure AD Integration: Single sign-on and fine-grained permissions out of the box.
• Audit Trail: Every question, generated SQL, and result is logged for compliance.
• No Data Training: Customer data is never used to train external AI models.
• GDPR & SOC 2 Aligned: Architecture designed for regulated industries.

How NLSQL Compares to Other Natural-Language-to-SQL Tools

The natural-language-to-SQL category has matured rapidly. Here's how NLSQL compares to common alternatives buyers evaluate:

Comparison based on publicly available product information as of 2026.

NLSQL vs ThoughtSpot: Which One Do You Need?

ThoughtSpot is the most frequent comparison we hear from buyers evaluating NLSQL — and with good reason. ThoughtSpot pioneered "search-driven analytics" and remains a market leader, particularly with its Spotter AI assistant launched in recent years. Both products let business users ask questions of their data in natural language. But they're architected for different jobs, different buyers, and different budgets.

The core difference

ThoughtSpot is a full BI platform. It brings its own semantic modeling layer, visualization engine, liveboards, governance tooling, and AI assistant (Spotter) — essentially a complete replacement for traditional BI tools like Tableau or Power BI, with conversational AI bolted on top. Organizations adopting ThoughtSpot typically undergo a multi-week implementation to model their data in ThoughtSpot's Worksheets and Models, then roll out the platform as their primary analytics UI.

NLSQL is a focused conversational layer. It runs on top of your existing SQL databases without requiring a separate semantic model or BI platform migration. Users ask questions in Microsoft Teams, Slack, or a web chat, and NLSQL generates the SQL, executes it, and returns the answer. There is no liveboard layer, no separate visualization canvas, and no data modeling lift — just fast, secure, conversational database access.

Deployment and time-to-value

ThoughtSpot deployments typically take 4–12 weeks from contract signing to meaningful user adoption, driven largely by semantic modeling (Worksheets, Models, and relationships) and user enablement. NLSQL deployments typically take under 15 minutes for the platform itself, with 1–2 hours for initial schema ingestion and tuning. For organizations that want conversational data access this quarter rather than next quarter, NLSQL is dramatically faster.

Data residency and governance

ThoughtSpot runs primarily as a SaaS platform (ThoughtSpot Cloud), with customer data ingested into ThoughtSpot's environment. On-premises deployment is available but is the less common path. NLSQL runs entirely inside the customer's own Microsoft Azure tenant — database credentials, queries, and results never leave the customer environment. For organizations in regulated industries (healthcare, finance, defense, EU public sector), the Azure-tenant deployment model is often a decisive factor.

Pricing and total cost of ownership

ThoughtSpot is priced as an enterprise BI platform, with published pricing starting in the tens of thousands of dollars annually and enterprise agreements typically running six figures. NLSQL is priced as an Azure Marketplace SaaS with a 30-day free trial and pay-as-you-go billing through your existing Azure subscription — materially lower than full BI platform pricing, with no procurement cycle required to start.

When to choose which

Both approaches are valid. Many customers deploy NLSQL alongside their existing BI platform (ThoughtSpot or otherwise) — using dashboards for recurring reports and NLSQL for the long tail of ad-hoc questions that would otherwise become analyst tickets.

Who NLSQL Is — and Isn't — For

Best fit:

• Mid-market and enterprise companies with structured data in SQL databases
• Organizations running on Microsoft Azure (or willing to deploy a small Azure footprint)
• Teams burdened with repetitive analyst requests and slow BI turnaround
• Regulated industries requiring data to stay inside the corporate tenant — healthcare, finance, manufacturing, retail

Not the right fit:

• Small teams without significant structured data (a spreadsheet is still fine)
• Organizations standardized exclusively on AWS or GCP without Azure presence
• Companies needing primarily unstructured document Q&A (see NLSQL AI Agent or AI Employee)
• Organizations seeking a full BI platform replacement (ThoughtSpot or Power BI are better fits for that)

NLSQL Product Family

NLSQL is the foundational natural-language-to-SQL engine. We also offer two productized solutions built on top of it for specific use cases:

• NLSQL AI Agent: Adds document intelligence (PDFs, SharePoint, Word) and hybrid reasoning on top of NLSQL — for teams that need to query unstructured knowledge alongside databases.
• NLSQL AI Employee: Packages NLSQL with workflow automation and an internal-support persona — for automating HR, IT, and operational questions across your workforce.
• NLSQL (this product): The core natural-language-to-SQL platform — ideal when your primary need is database querying without the extras.

Deploy in Minutes — 30 Days Free

Get NLSQL running in your Azure environment in under 15 minutes. No setup consulting, no long procurement cycles, no credit card required for the trial.

Frequently Asked Questions