# Beyond Natural Language Plans: Structure-Aware Planning for Query-Focused Table Summarization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22829 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22829/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Compositional Semantic Parsing on Semi-Structured Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.00305/) (2015)
- [TabFact: A Large-scale Dataset for Table-based Fact Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.02164/) (2019)
- [TAPEX: Table Pre-training via Learning a Neural SQL Executor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07653/) (2021)
- [Binding Language Models in Symbolic Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02875/) (2022)
- [Chain-of-Table: Evolving Tables in the Reasoning Chain for Table Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04398/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models are Versatile Decomposers: Decompose Evidence and Questions for Table-based Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13808/) (2023)
- [FeTaQA: Free-form Table Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00369/) (2021)
- [ReAcTable: Enhancing ReAct for Table Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00815/) (2023)
- [MultiTabQA: Generating Tabular Answers for Multi-Table Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12820/) (2023)
- [GraphOTTER: Evolving LLM-based Graph Reasoning for Complex Table Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01230/) (2024)
- [Interpretable LLM-based Table Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.12386/) (2024)
- [PLOG: Table-to-Logic Pretraining for Logical Table-to-Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12697/) (2022)
- [Weakly Supervised Text-to-SQL Parsing through Question Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.06311/) (2021)
- [Semantic Decomposition of Question and SQL for Text-to-SQL Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13575/) (2023)
- [QFMTS: Generating Query-Focused Summaries over Multi-Table Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05109/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [FACTS: Table Summarization via Offline Template Generation with Agentic Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13920/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Query-focused table summarization requires complex reasoning, often approached through step-by-step natural language (NL) plans. However, NL plans are inherently ambiguous and lack structure, limiting their conversion into executable programs like SQL and hindering scalability, especially for multi-table tasks. To address this, we propose a paradigm shift to structured representations. We introduce a new structured plan, TaSoF, inspired by formalism in traditional multi-agent systems, and a framework, SPaGe, that formalizes the reasoning process in three phases: 1) Structured Planning to generate TaSoF from a query, 2) Graph-based Execution to convert plan steps into SQL and model dependencies via a directed cyclic graph for parallel execution, and 3) Summary Generation to produce query-focused summaries. Our method explicitly captures complex dependencies and improves reliability. Experiments on three public benchmarks show that SPaGe consistently outperforms prior models in both single- and multi-table settings, demonstrating the advantages of structured representations for robust and scalable summarization.