Can LLMs substitute SQL? Comparing Resource Utilization of Querying LLMs versus Traditional Relational Databases
This addresses the problem of resource efficiency for software engineers considering LLMs as substitutes for SQL databases, showing it is an incremental analysis with negative implications.
This study evaluated the resource utilization and accuracy of nine LLMs for interpreting and executing natural language queries compared to traditional SQL in relational databases, finding that LLMs incur significant energy overhead, making them environmentally unfriendly for this purpose.
Large Language Models (LLMs) can automate or substitute different types of tasks in the software engineering process. This study evaluates the resource utilization and accuracy of LLM in interpreting and executing natural language queries against traditional SQL within relational database management systems. We empirically examine the resource utilization and accuracy of nine LLMs varying from 7 to 34 Billion parameters, including Llama2 7B, Llama2 13B, Mistral, Mixtral, Optimus-7B, SUS-chat-34B, platypus-yi-34b, NeuralHermes-2.5-Mistral-7B and Starling-LM-7B-alpha, using a small transaction dataset. Our findings indicate that using LLMs for database queries incurs significant energy overhead (even small and quantized models), making it an environmentally unfriendly approach. Therefore, we advise against replacing relational databases with LLMs due to their substantial resource utilization.