Natural-language questions
Natural-language querying uses a semantic profile to connect a question to the selected database. The profile defines concepts, relationships, measures, and supported question types. ShrikeDB turns the resulting structured intent into an inspectable query plan.
Prepare the database
Load the data and a matching profile first. Profiles and domain vocabulary explains profile review; Connect an MCP agent shows how to connect an agent and list available profiles. The client provides any language-model integration.
Ask a precise question
Select a database and profile in your semantic client. Include the measure, grouping, filters, and time interval you need. For example, with a retail profile defining purchases and payment amounts:
Show total purchase amount by customer for July 2024, ordered from highest to lowest, with at most 20 customers.
The profile must define the purchase relationship, amount field, and timestamp. If one is missing or ambiguous, resolve the clarification rather than substituting an unrelated field.
Review the interpretation
Before executing a complex question, inspect its concepts, relationship direction, aggregate measure, filters, and output fields. MCP clients can use semantic_reason, semantic_compile, and semantic_explain; their complete call format is in Connect an MCP agent.
Check whether “no matching event” means missing data or an observed absence. Check the units and timezone used for comparisons. These decisions determine the answer even when a plan is syntactically valid.
Read the answer
The response includes rows and information about the plan and data used. Confirm the selected profile, output fields, row limit, and any truncation or fallback diagnostics. Results And Inspection explains the console’s result panels and corresponding metadata.
When lakehouse is enabled, only reviewed mappings covering the requested concepts and constraints can contribute to semantic execution. A skipped mapping is reported in the diagnostics; it does not automatically mean the source has no matching records.