# RubikSQL: Lifelong Learning Agentic Knowledge Base as an Industrial NL2SQL System

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17590 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17590/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Web, search, and research agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 27 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Web, search, and research agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/web-search-and-research-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10560/) (2022)
- [Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03314/) (2024)
- [MemGPT: Towards LLMs as Operating Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08560/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Can LLM Already Serve as A Database Interface? A BIg Bench for Large-Scale Database Grounded Text-to-SQLs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03111/) (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)
- [Spider 2.0: Evaluating Language Models on Real-World Enterprise Text-to-SQL Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07763/) (2024)
- [MAC-SQL: A Multi-Agent Collaborative Framework for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11242/) (2023)
- [Symbolic Chain-of-Thought Distillation: Small Models Can Also "Think" Step-by-Step](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14050/) (2023)
- [KaggleDBQA: Realistic Evaluation of Text-to-SQL Parsers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11455/) (2021)
- [MCS-SQL: Leveraging Multiple Prompts and Multiple-Choice Selection For Text-to-SQL Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07467/) (2024)
- [A Preview of XiYan-SQL: A Multi-Generator Ensemble Framework for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08599/) (2024)
- [Text-to-SQL in the Wild: A Naturally-Occurring Dataset Based on Stack Exchange Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05006/) (2021)
- [BEAVER: An Enterprise Benchmark for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02038/) (2024)
- [Arctic-Text2SQL-R1: Simple Rewards, Strong Reasoning in Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20315/) (2025)
- [Alpha-SQL: Zero-Shot Text-to-SQL using Monte Carlo Tree Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17248/) (2025)
- [Automatic Metadata Extraction for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19988/) (2025)
- [Selective Demonstrations for Cross-domain Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06302/) (2023)
- [AI-native Memory 2.0: Second Me](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08102/) (2025)
- [BookSQL: A Large Scale Text-to-SQL Dataset for Accounting Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07860/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Base Construction for Knowledge-Augmented Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22096/) (2025)
- [BIS: NL2SQL Service Evaluation Benchmark for Business Intelligence Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.22925/) (2024)
- [TailorSQL: An NL2SQL System Tailored to Your Query Workload](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23039/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [PV-SQL: Synergizing Database Probing and Rule-based Verification for Text-to-SQL Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17653/) (2026)
- [Data Intelligence Agents: Interpreting, Modeling, and Querying Enterprise Data via Autonomous Coding Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.19319/) (2026)
- [From Test-Time Scaling to Reusable Memory: Measuring Crystallization in Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07213/) (2026)
- [Towards Reliable AI Data Scientists: Data Agents with Workflow Harnesses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35255/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present RubikSQL, a novel NL2SQL system designed to address key challenges in real-world enterprise-level NL2SQL, such as implicit intents and domain-specific terminology. RubikSQL frames NL2SQL as a lifelong learning task, demanding both Knowledge Base (KB) maintenance and SQL generation. RubikSQL systematically builds and refines its KB through techniques including database profiling, structured information extraction, agentic rule mining, and Chain-of-Thought (CoT)-enhanced SQL profiling. RubikSQL then employs a multi-agent workflow to leverage this curated KB, generating accurate SQLs. RubikSQL achieves SOTA performance on both the KaggleDBQA and BIRD Mini-Dev datasets. Finally, we release the RubikBench benchmark, a new benchmark specifically designed to capture vital traits of industrial NL2SQL scenarios, providing a valuable resource for future research.