Diverse Parallel Data Synthesis for Cross-Database Adaptation of Text-to-SQL Parsers
On the map: Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs → Synthetic reasoning data and bootstrapping
Abstract (arXiv)
Text-to-SQL parsers typically struggle with databases unseen during the train time. Adapting parsers to new databases is a challenging problem due to the lack of natural language queries in the new schemas. We present ReFill, a framework for synthesizing high-quality and textually diverse parallel datasets for adapting a Text-to-SQL parser to a target schema. ReFill learns to retrieve-and-edit text queries from the existing schemas and transfers them to the target schema. We show that retrieving diverse existing text, masking their schema-specific tokens, and refilling with tokens relevant to the target schema, leads to significantly more diverse text queries than achievable by standard SQL-to-Text generation methods. Through experiments spanning multiple databases, we demonstrate that fine-tuning parsers on datasets synthesized using ReFill consistently outperforms the prior data-augmentation methods.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Synthetic reasoning data and bootstrapping, one of 13 directions in Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs. Builds on 31 of its 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Oct 2022.
Builds on
31 of 45 references.
References · 31
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19 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 1; 2025: 3; 2026: 2.
7 papers.
- 2025OmniSQL: Synthesizing High-quality Text-to-SQL Data at Scalecited by 90
- 2023Benchmarking and Improving Text-to-SQL Generation under Ambiguitycited by 31
- 2024Improving Retrieval-augmented Text-to-SQL with AST-based Ranking and Schema Pruningcited by 16
- 2025A survey of diversity quantification in natural language processing: The why, what, where and howcited by 4
- 2025REFORMER: A ChatGPT-Driven Data Synthesis Framework Elevating Text-to-SQL Modelscited by 1
- 2026A Diversity Diet for a Healthier Model: A Case Study of French ModernBERTcited by 0
- 2026Reliable Answers for Recurring Questions: Boosting Text-to-SQL Accuracy with Template Constrained Decodingcited by 0
- 2026Reliable Answers for Recurring Questions: Boosting Text-to-SQL Accuracy with Template Constrained Decoding30 Apr 2026
- 2026A Diversity Diet for a Healthier Model: A Case Study of French ModernBERT25 Feb 2026
- 2025A survey of diversity quantification in natural language processing: The why, what, where and how28 Jul 2025
- 2025REFORMER: A ChatGPT-Driven Data Synthesis Framework Elevating Text-to-SQL Models6 Apr 2025
- 2025OmniSQL: Synthesizing High-quality Text-to-SQL Data at Scale4 Mar 2025
- 2024Improving Retrieval-augmented Text-to-SQL with AST-based Ranking and Schema Pruning3 Jul 2024
- 2023Benchmarking and Improving Text-to-SQL Generation under Ambiguity20 Oct 2023
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026EvolSQL: Structure-Aware Evolution for Scalable Text-to-SQL Data Synthesis
- 2025Text2SQL-Flow: A Robust SQL-Aware Data Augmentation Framework for Text-to-SQL
- 2025ReFoRCE: A Text-to-SQL Agent with Self-Refinement, Consensus Enforcement, and Column Exploration
- 2026LIMIT: Less Is More for Instruction Tuning in Text-to-SQL
- 2025SING-SQL: A Synthetic Data Generation Framework for In-Domain Text-to-SQL Translation
- 2026BIRDTurk: Adaptation of the BIRD Text-to-SQL Dataset to Turkish
- 2025RetrySQL: text-to-SQL training with retry data for self-correcting query generation
- 2025SQLForge: Synthesizing Reliable and Diverse Data to Enhance Text-to-SQL Reasoning in LLMs