mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Divide and Prompt: Chain of Thought Prompting for Text-to-SQL

arXiv 2304.11556 ↗First posted 23 Apr 2023cs.CL cs.AIcited by 20

On the map: LLM reasoning → Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting combined with large language models (LLMs) have achieved encouraging results on complex reasoning tasks. Text-to-SQL is a critical semantic parsing task that converts natural language questions into SQL statements, involving a complex reasoning process. However, there is little work about using CoT prompting to activate LLM's reasoning capabilities on Text-to-SQL tasks. In this work, we propose a new paradigm for prompting Text-to-SQL tasks, called Divide-and-Prompt, which first divides the task into subtasks, and then approach each subtask through CoT. We present 3 prompting-based methods to enhance the Text-to-SQL ability of LLMs. Experiments show that these prompts guide LLMs to generate Text-to-SQL with higher execution accuracy.

Key facts. Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Prompting and chain-of-thought reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 24 of its 25 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2023.

Builds on

24 of 25 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2022Automatic Chain of Thought Prompting in Large Language Models7 Oct
  2. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners24 May
  3. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models28 Jan

Other references · 21

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,399
  2. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,419
  3. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,599
  4. 2019BART: Denoising Sequence-to-Sequence Pre-training for Natural Language Generation, Translation, and Comprehensioncited by 5,893
  5. 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,326
  6. 2017Deep reinforcement learning from human preferencescited by 3,912
  7. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,442
  8. 2022LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applicationscited by 1,220
  9. 2018Spider: A Large-Scale Human-Labeled Dataset for Complex and Cross-Domain Semantic Parsing and Text-to-SQL Taskcited by 1,139
  10. 2019RAT-SQL: Relation-Aware Schema Encoding and Linking for Text-to-SQL Parserscited by 424
  11. 2021PICARD: Parsing Incrementally for Constrained Auto-Regressive Decoding from Language Modelscited by 411
  12. 2023Larger language models do in-context learning differentlycited by 394
9 more
  1. 2023RESDSQL: Decoupling Schema Linking and Skeleton Parsing for Text-to-SQLcited by 195
  2. 2020Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-SQL with Distilled Test Suitescited by 126
  3. 2023A comprehensive evaluation of ChatGPT's zero-shot Text-to-SQL capabilitycited by 119
  4. 2021Towards Robustness of Text-to-SQL Models against Synonym Substitutioncited by 110
  5. 2022Evaluating the Text-to-SQL Capabilities of Large Language Modelscited by 101
  6. 2023Graphix-T5: Mixing Pre-Trained Transformers with Graph-Aware Layers for Text-to-SQL Parsingcited by 93
  7. 2021Exploring Underexplored Limitations of Cross-Domain Text-to-SQL Generalizationcited by 92
  8. 2020Learning Contextual Representations for Semantic Parsing with Generation-Augmented Pre-Trainingcited by 65
  9. 2022Measuring and Improving Compositional Generalization in Text-to-SQL via Component Alignmentcited by 16

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 4; 2024: 2; 2025: 10; 2026: 4.

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  1. 2024A Survey on Employing Large Language Models for Text-to-SQL Taskscited by 67
  2. 2024PURPLE: Making a Large Language Model a Better SQL Writercited by 34
  3. 2025Is Long Context All You Need? Leveraging LLM's Extended Context for NL2SQLcited by 30
  4. 2023Natural Language Interfaces for Tabular Data Querying and Visualization: A Surveycited by 27
  5. 2025STaR-SQL: Self-Taught Reasoner for Text-to-SQLcited by 17
  6. 2023Semantic Decomposition of Question and SQL for Text-to-SQL Parsingcited by 14
  7. 2025Knowledge Base Construction for Knowledge-Augmented Text-to-SQLcited by 9
  8. 2023Battle of the Large Language Models: Dolly vs LLaMA vs Vicuna vs Guanaco vs Bard vs ChatGPT -- A Text-to-SQL Parsing Comparisoncited by 6
  9. 2025Exploring the Landscape of Text-to-SQL with Large Language Models: Progresses, Challenges and Opportunitiescited by 4
  10. 2025MultiTEND: A Multilingual Benchmark for Natural Language to NoSQL Query Translationcited by 3
  11. 2025SDE-SQL: Enhancing Text-to-SQL Generation in Large Language Models via Self-Driven Exploration with SQL Probescited by 2
  12. 2023Semantic Parsing for Complex Data Retrieval: Targeting Query Plans vs. SQL for No-Code Access to Relational Databasescited by 1
8 more
  1. 2025Diverse In-Context Example Selection After Decomposing Programs and Aligned Utterances Improves Semantic Parsingcited by 1
  2. 2025Agentic LLMs for Question Answering over Tabular Datacited by 1
  3. 2025ORANGE: An Online Reflection ANd GEneration framework with Domain Knowledge for Text-to-SQLcited by 1
  4. 2025Knowledge Distillation with Structured Chain-of-Thought for Text-to-SQLcited by 1
  5. 2026EXPO-SQL: Execution-based Clause-level Policy Optimization for Text-to-SQLcited by 1
  6. 2026SDAM: Structure-Difference-Aware Memory Evolution for Complex Text-to-SQLcited by 0
  7. 2026ESQ-Bench: A Multi-Tier Enterprise Oracle Benchmark for Evaluating NL2SQL Dialect Generalization and Silent Semantic Divergencecited by 0
  8. 2026DRL: A Deterministic Relational Middleware Layer for Transaction-Safe Enterprise NL2SQL Under Schema-Graph Scalingcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2023Exploring Chain-of-Thought Style Prompting for Text-to-SQL
  2. 2023How to Prompt LLMs for Text-to-SQL: A Study in Zero-shot, Single-domain, and Cross-domain Settings
  3. 2022Towards Understanding Chain-of-Thought Prompting: An Empirical Study of What Matters
  4. 2023Chain-Of-Thought Prompting Under Streaming Batch: A Case Study
  5. 2023ACT-SQL: In-Context Learning for Text-to-SQL with Automatically-Generated Chain-of-Thought
  6. 2023Towards Better Chain-of-Thought Prompting Strategies: A Survey
  7. 2025Understanding Before Reasoning: Enhancing Chain-of-Thought with Iterative Summarization Pre-Prompting
  8. 2024Chain-of-Thought Reasoning Without Prompting