# EPI-SQL: Enhancing Text-to-SQL Translation with Error-Prevention Instructions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.14453 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14453/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Challenging BIG-Bench Tasks and Whether Chain-of-Thought Can Solve Them](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09261/) (2022)
- [What Makes Good In-Context Examples for GPT-3?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06804/) (2021)
- [Spider: A Large-Scale Human-Labeled Dataset for Complex and Cross-Domain Semantic Parsing and Text-to-SQL Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08887/) (2018)
- [Teaching Large Language Models to Self-Debug](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05128/) (2023)
- [DIN-SQL: Decomposed In-Context Learning of Text-to-SQL with Self-Correction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11015/) (2023)
- [RAT-SQL: Relation-Aware Schema Encoding and Linking for Text-to-SQL Parsers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04942/) (2019)
- [PICARD: Parsing Incrementally for Constrained Auto-Regressive Decoding from Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05093/) (2021)
- [Text-to-SQL Empowered by Large Language Models: A Benchmark Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15363/) (2023)
- [LEVER: Learning to Verify Language-to-Code Generation with Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08468/) (2023)
- [RESDSQL: Decoupling Schema Linking and Skeleton Parsing for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05965/) (2023)
- [GraPPa: Grammar-Augmented Pre-Training for Table Semantic Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13845/) (2020)
- [C3: Zero-shot Text-to-SQL with ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07306/) (2023)
- [Multi-lingual Evaluation of Code Generation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.14868/) (2022)
- [Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-SQL with Distilled Test Suites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02840/) (2020)
- [Natural Language to Code Translation with Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11454/) (2022)
- [A comprehensive evaluation of ChatGPT's zero-shot Text-to-SQL capability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13547/) (2023)
- [Graphix-T5: Mixing Pre-Trained Transformers with Graph-Aware Layers for Text-to-SQL Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07507/) (2023)
- [RASAT: Integrating Relational Structures into Pretrained Seq2Seq Model for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06983/) (2022)
- [Coder Reviewer Reranking for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16490/) (2022)
- [Learning Contextual Representations for Semantic Parsing with Generation-Augmented Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10309/) (2020)
- [RYANSQL: Recursively Applying Sketch-based Slot Fillings for Complex Text-to-SQL in Cross-Domain Databases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.03125/) (2020)
- [Enhancing Few-shot Text-to-SQL Capabilities of Large Language Models: A Study on Prompt Design Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12586/) (2023)
- [SADGA: Structure-Aware Dual Graph Aggregation Network for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00653/) (2021)
- [Importance of Synthesizing High-quality Data for Text-to-SQL Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08785/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [SHARE: An SLM-based Hierarchical Action CorREction Assistant for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00391/) (2025)
- [SM3-Text-to-Query: Synthetic Multi-Model Medical Text-to-Query Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05521/) (2024)
- [DAC: Decomposed Automation Correction for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08779/) (2024)
- [DB-Explore: Automated Database Exploration and Instruction Synthesis for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04959/) (2025)
- [Exploring the Landscape of Text-to-SQL with Large Language Models: Progresses, Challenges and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23838/) (2025)
- [Distill-C: Enhanced NL2SQL via Distilled Customization with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00048/) (2025)
- [Beyond Static Rules: Automated Discovery of Latent Vulnerabilities in Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.03833/) (2026)
- [LIMIT: Less Is More for Instruction Tuning in Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.24186/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The conversion of natural language queries into SQL queries, known as Text-to-SQL, is a critical yet challenging task. This paper introduces EPI-SQL, a novel methodological framework leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance the performance of Text-to-SQL tasks. EPI-SQL operates through a four-step process. Initially, the method involves gathering instances from the Spider dataset on which LLMs are prone to failure. These instances are then utilized to generate general error-prevention instructions (EPIs). Subsequently, LLMs craft contextualized EPIs tailored to the specific context of the current task. Finally, these context-specific EPIs are incorporated into the prompt used for SQL generation. EPI-SQL is distinguished in that it provides task-specific guidance, enabling the model to circumvent potential errors for the task at hand. Notably, the methodology rivals the performance of advanced few-shot methods despite being a zero-shot approach. An empirical assessment using the Spider benchmark reveals that EPI-SQL achieves an execution accuracy of 85.1%, underscoring its effectiveness in generating accurate SQL queries through LLMs. The findings indicate a promising direction for future research, i.e. enhancing instructions with task-specific and contextualized rules, for boosting LLMs' performance in NLP tasks.