Text-to-SQL

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Overview

Text-to-SQL studies how to turn natural-language questions into database queries that retrieve the intended information. Systems link questions to tables, columns, and values, then generate SQL using language models, structured intermediate plans, retrieval, or schema-aware semantic metadata. Common approaches add query decomposition, execution feedback, verification, and iterative repair; training methods include fine-tuning on curated or synthetic examples and reinforcement learning with execution-based rewards. Benchmarks such as Spider and BIRD test execution accuracy, but real deployments also expose challenges in large or changing schemas, ambiguity, multiple SQL dialects, and balancing reliability against cost and latency.

Latest papers

CardsList

173 papers24 papers in the last four weeks, up 33% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Are LLMs Overkill for Databases?: A Study on the Finiteness of SQL

    Mar 26, 2026Yue Li, David Mimno, Unso Eun Seo JoText-to-SQLQuery Complexity

    Cornell University

  2. Schema on the Inside: A Two-Phase Fine-Tuning Method for High-Efficiency Text-to-SQL at Scale

    Mar 25, 2026Chinmay Soni, Shivam Chourasia, Gaurav Kumar +1Sports AnalyticsText-to-SQL

    Sporta Technologies Private Limited, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

  3. Optimizing Small Language Models for NL2SQL via Chain-of-Thought Fine-Tuning

    Mar 24, 2026Anshul Solanki, Sanchit Latawa, Koushik Chakraborty +1Text-to-SQLFine-Tuning

    Google AI, Global Services Delivery

  4. Human-Level Text-to-SQL via Reinforcement Learning on Verified Data, Without Pipeline Engineering

    Mar 20, 2026Yuxuan Zhu, Tengjun Jin, Yoojin Choi +1Text-to-SQLReinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards

    University of Illinois · Bridgewater AIA Labs

  5. LLM NL2SQL Robustness: Surface Noise vs. Linguistic Variation in Traditional and Agentic Settings

    Mar 17, 2026Lifu Tu, Rongguang Wang, Tao Sheng +2Text-to-SQLLanguage Model Robustness

    Oracle AI

  6. TRUST-SQL: Tool-Integrated Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning for Text-to-SQL over Unknown Schemas

    Mar 17, 2026Ai Jian, Xiaoyun Zhang, Eryu Guo +6Schema LinkingGroup Relative Policy Optimization

    Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China · State Key Lab of Processors, Institute of Computing Technology, CAS · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences +1

  7. SQL-ASTRA: Alleviating Sparse Feedback in Agentic SQL via Column-Set Matching and Trajectory Aggregation

    Mar 17, 2026Long Li, Zhijian Zhou, Jiangxuan Long +5Text-to-SQLStep-Level Credit Assignment in RL

    Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia · Fudan University, Shanghai, China · Shanghai Innovation Institute, China +4

  8. EvoSchema: Towards Text-to-SQL Robustness Against Schema Evolution

    Mar 11, 2026Tianshu Zhang, Kun Qian, Siddhartha Sahai +4Text-to-SQLLanguage Model Robustness

    The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH · Adobe Inc., Seattle, WA · Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN +2

  9. An Efficient and Effective Evaluator for Text2SQL Models on Unseen and Unlabeled Data

    Mar 8, 2026Trinh Pham, Thanh Tam Nguyen, Viet Huynh +2Automated EvaluationText-to-SQL

    Griffith University (Australia) · Edith Cowan University (Australia) · The University of Queensland (Australia)

  10. Dial: A Knowledge-Grounded Dialect-Specific NL2SQL System

    Mar 8, 2026Xiang Zhang, Hongming Xu, Le Zhou +8Execution-Guided Text-to-SQLText-to-SQL

    Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. · Tsinghua University · HKUST (GZ) +2

  11. Track-SQL: Enhancing Generative Language Models with Dual-Extractive Modules for Schema and Context Tracking in Multi-turn Text-to-SQL

    Mar 6, 2026Bingfeng Chen, Shaobin Shi, Yongqi Luo +3Text-to-SQLSchema Linking

    School of Computer Science, Guangdong University of Technology · Guangdong Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy (SZ) · Peng Cheng Laboratory +1

  12. CBR-to-SQL: Rethinking Retrieval-based Text-to-SQL using Case-based Reasoning in the Healthcare Domain

    Mar 5, 2026Hung Nguyen, Hans Moen, Pekka MarttinenCase-Based ReasoningText-to-SQL

    Department of Computer Science Aalto University · Department of Clinical Medicine Aalborg University

  13. SpotIt+: Verification-based Text-to-SQL Evaluation with Database Constraints

    Mar 4, 2026Andrew Tremante, Yang He, Rocky Klopfenstein +3Text-to-SQL EvaluationText-to-SQL

    ∗Amherst College · †Simon Fraser University · ‡VMware Research by Broadcom

  14. ErrorLLM: Modeling SQL Errors for Text-to-SQL Refinement

    Mar 4, 2026Zijin Hong, Hao Chen, Zheng Yuan +6LLM Self-CorrectionText-to-SQL

    The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Kowloon, Hong Kong · City University of Macau Taipa, Macau · Jilin University Changchun, China +3

  15. An Agentic System for Schema Aware NL2SQL Generation

    Feb 25, 2026David Onyango, Naseef MansoorText-to-SQLCost-Aware Inference

    Project Path, Boston, MA, USA · Minnesota State University Mankato, MN, USA

  16. Both Ends Count! Just How Good are LLM Agents at "Text-to-Big SQL"?

    Feb 25, 2026Germán T. Eizaguirre, Lars Tissen, Marc Sánchez-ArtigasText-to-SQLLLM Evaluation

    Universitat Rovira i Virgili Tarragona, Spain · RWTH Aachen University Aachen, Germany

  17. Beyond Static Pipelines: Learning Dynamic Workflows for Text-to-SQL

    Feb 17, 2026Yihan Wang, Peiyu Liu, Runyu Chen +1Text-to-SQLLLM Agent Workflow Optimization

    Renmin University of China · University of International Business and Economics

  18. RAG Strategies for Natural Language-Based SQL Query and REST API Call Generation

    Feb 6, 2026Tim Schlippe, Simon Martin, Michael MarketsmüllerRetrieval-Augmented GenerationRAG Evaluation

    IU International University of Applied Sciences, Germany

  19. IESR:Efficient MCTS-Based Modular Reasoning for Text-to-SQL with Large Language Models

    Feb 5, 2026Tao Liu, Jiafan Lu, Bohan Yu +11Small Language ModelsText-to-SQL

    Zhengzhou University · Tianjin University · Zhongshan University

  20. CORE-T: COherent REtrieval of Tables for Text-to-SQL

    Jan 19, 2026Hassan Soliman, Vivek Gupta, Dan Roth +1Text-to-SQLInformation Retrieval

    Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing Lab (UKP Lab), Department of Computer Science TU Darmstadt and National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE, Germany · Arizona State University · University of Pennsylvania

  21. Effective and Efficient Threat Hunting with Small Language Models

    Dec 7, 2025Saleha Muzammil, Rahul Reddy, Vishal Kamalakrishnan +2CybersecuritySmall Language Models

    University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA · Corvic, USA

  22. LearNAT: Learning NL2SQL with AST-guided Task Decomposition for Large Language Models

    Apr 3, 2025Weibin Liao, Xin Gao, Tianyu Jia +6LLM PlanningRL for Language Model Reasoning

    School of Computer Science, Peking University · 2Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies, Ministry of Education · School of Computer Sciences, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications +5

  23. QDA-SQL: Questions Enhanced Dialogue Augmentation for Multi-Turn Text-to-SQL

    Jun 15, 2024Yinggang Sun, Ziming Guo, Haining Yu +5Synthetic Data GenerationQuestion Answering

    School of Cyberspace Science · Harbin Institute of Technology · Harbin, China +4