The present disclosure describes a system, method, and computer program for converting a natural language query to a structured database query. In response to receiving a natural language query for a database, an NLU model is applied to the query to identify an intent and entities associated with the query. The intent is mapped to a database object, and candidate query fields and operands are identified from the entities. The candidate query fields and operands are evaluated to identify any subject fields, conditional expressions, record count limit, and ordering/sorting criteria for the query. This including matching certain query fields and operands based on query parameters, operand types, and locations of operands relative to query fields. A query plan is created based on the evaluation of the candidate query fields and operands, and a database query is generated from the query plan.