I had been thinking about having a dedicated relational database server at home, and found an unused old PC that was laying around and fit for the purpose. Changing to Ubuntu and installing the chosen open source database was quite fast. Then there was setting up a secure connection between the server and my main computer using RSA keys, and the nearby electronics shop had me a new desktop internet switch. ChatGPT was a great assistant, again.
Planning and writing a minimalist software for the tunneled database connection took few more evenings. I wanted to be able to perform database tasks from the command line, having an option of using some ready Python functions instead of plain SQL. The cherry on top of the cake was adding natural language queries for the database. The system couples any question with the relevant table definitions read from the database, then receives a SQL script from AI that can be used to retrieve the answer, and runs this query in the database for numeric results. As a final step, you could have AI interpreting the results, but for this project I didn’t automatize the analysis.