mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Pi-SQL: Enhancing Text-to-SQL with Fine-Grained Guidance from Pivot Programming Languages

arXiv 2506.00912 ↗First posted 1 Jun 2025cs.CL cs.AIcited by 3

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Text-to-SQL transforms the user queries from natural language to executable SQL programs, enabling non-experts to interact with complex databases. Existing prompt-based methods craft meticulous text guidelines and examples to facilitate SQL generation, but their accuracy is hindered by the large semantic gap between the texts and the low-resource SQL programs. In this work, we propose Pi-SQL, which incorporates the high-resource Python program as a pivot to bridge between the natural language query and SQL program. In particular, Pi-SQL first generates Python programs that provide fine-grained step-by-step guidelines in their code blocks or comments, and then produces an SQL program following the guidance of each Python program. The final SQL program matches the reference Python program's query results and, through selection from candidates generated by different strategies, achieves superior execution speed, with a reward-based valid efficiency score up to 4.55 higher than the best-performing baseline. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of Pi-SQL, which improves the execution accuracy of the best-performing baseline by up to 3.20.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 32 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2025.

Builds on

32 of 47 references.

References · 32

  1. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,708
  2. 2020mT5: A massively multilingual pre-trained text-to-text transformercited by 1,818
  3. 2024Qwen2.5-Coder Technical Reportcited by 1,203
  4. 2018Spider: A Large-Scale Human-Labeled Dataset for Complex and Cross-Domain Semantic Parsing and Text-to-SQL Taskcited by 1,139
  5. 2019Cross-lingual Language Model Pretrainingcited by 1,090
  6. 2023Teaching Large Language Models to Self-Debugcited by 988
  7. 2023Can LLM Already Serve as A Database Interface? A BIg Bench for Large-Scale Database Grounded Text-to-SQLscited by 688
  8. 2023DIN-SQL: Decomposed In-Context Learning of Text-to-SQL with Self-Correctioncited by 477
  9. 2019RAT-SQL: Relation-Aware Schema Encoding and Linking for Text-to-SQL Parserscited by 424
  10. 2023Text-to-SQL Empowered by Large Language Models: A Benchmark Evaluationcited by 385
  11. 2023RESDSQL: Decoupling Schema Linking and Skeleton Parsing for Text-to-SQLcited by 195
  12. 2024CodeS: Towards Building Open-source Language Models for Text-to-SQLcited by 187
20 more
  1. 2024CHESS: Contextual Harnessing for Efficient SQL Synthesiscited by 169
  2. 2023C3: Zero-shot Text-to-SQL with ChatGPTcited by 164
  3. 2024CHASE-SQL: Multi-Path Reasoning and Preference Optimized Candidate Selection in Text-to-SQLcited by 138
  4. 2024Next-Generation Database Interfaces: A Survey of LLM-based Text-to-SQLcited by 120
  5. 2021LGESQL: Line Graph Enhanced Text-to-SQL Model with Mixed Local and Non-Local Relationscited by 119
  6. 2024MCS-SQL: Leveraging Multiple Prompts and Multiple-Choice Selection For Text-to-SQL Generationcited by 105
  7. 2019Unicoder: A Universal Language Encoder by Pre-training with Multiple Cross-lingual Taskscited by 96
  8. 2024The Death of Schema Linking? Text-to-SQL in the Age of Well-Reasoned Language Modelscited by 67
  9. 2024VLM Agents Generate Their Own Memories: Distilling Experience into Embodied Programs of Thoughtcited by 55
  10. 2025OpenSearch-SQL: Enhancing Text-to-SQL with Dynamic Few-shot and Consistency Alignmentcited by 53
  11. 2024TinyChart: Efficient Chart Understanding with Visual Token Merging and Program-of-Thoughts Learningcited by 52
  12. 2024Before Generation, Align it! A Novel and Effective Strategy for Mitigating Hallucinations in Text-to-SQL Generationcited by 50
  13. 2023SQL-PaLM: Improved Large Language Model Adaptation for Text-to-SQL (extended)cited by 42
  14. 2019Pivot-based Transfer Learning for Neural Machine Translation between Non-English Languagescited by 36
  15. 2024E-SQL: Direct Schema Linking via Question Enrichment in Text-to-SQLcited by 35
  16. 2017An Encoder-Decoder Framework Translating Natural Language to Database Queriescited by 23
  17. 2024Pelican: Correcting Hallucination in Vision-LLMs via Claim Decomposition and Program of Thought Verificationcited by 17
  18. 2024Archer: A Human-Labeled Text-to-SQL Dataset with Arithmetic, Commonsense and Hypothetical Reasoningcited by 13
  19. 2024R3: "This is My SQL, Are You With Me?" A Consensus-Based Multi-Agent System for Text-to-SQL Taskscited by 7
  20. 2025Towards Better Understanding of Program-of-Thought Reasoning in Cross-Lingual and Multilingual Environmentscited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 2.

3 papers.

  1. 2026FlexSQL: Flexible Exploration and Execution Make Better Text-to-SQL Agentscited by 4
  2. 2025JudgeSQL: Reasoning over SQL Candidates with Weighted Consensus Tournamentcited by 1
  3. 2026Beyond Static Rules: Automated Discovery of Latent Vulnerabilities in Text-to-SQLcited by 0