# RAG Strategies for Natural Language-Based SQL Query and REST API Call Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07086 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07086/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07974/) (2024)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [Gorilla: Large Language Model Connected with Massive APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15334/) (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)
- [A Survey on Large Language Models for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00515/) (2024)
- [API-Bank: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Tool-Augmented LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08244/) (2023)
- [Spider 2.0: Evaluating Language Models on Real-World Enterprise Text-to-SQL Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07763/) (2024)
- [APIGen: Automated Pipeline for Generating Verifiable and Diverse Function-Calling Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18518/) (2024)
- [CoSQL: A Conversational Text-to-SQL Challenge Towards Cross-Domain Natural Language Interfaces to Databases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.05378/) (2019)
- [DocPrompting: Generating Code by Retrieving the Docs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05987/) (2022)
- [SParC: Cross-Domain Semantic Parsing in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02285/) (2019)
- [Chain-of-Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14342/) (2025)
- [NESTFUL: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs on Nested Sequences of API Calls](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03797/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Cross-Domain Text-to-SQL Models and Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18538/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Chunk Size For Long-Document Retrieval: A Multi-Dataset Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21700/) (2025)
- [When LLMs Meet API Documentation: Can Retrieval Augmentation Aid Code Generation Just as It Helps Developers?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15231/) (2025)
- [Chunk Twice, Embed Once: A Systematic Study of Segmentation and Representation Trade-offs in Chemistry-Aware Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17277/) (2025)
- [FANTAstic SEquences and Where to Find Them: Faithful and Efficient API Call Generation through State-tracked Constrained Decoding and Reranking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13945/) (2024)
- [DBTagger: Multi-Task Learning for Keyword Mapping in NLIDBs Using Bi-Directional Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.04226/) (2021)
- [SEAL: Suite for Evaluating API-use of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15523/) (2024)
- [Calibrated Trust in Dealing with LLM Hallucinations: A Qualitative Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09088/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Enterprise software systems commonly expose business functionality through both relational databases and REST APIs. Accessing these interfaces requires specialized technical knowledge, as users must determine whether a request requires a database query or an API operation and understand the corresponding schemas, endpoints, and parameters. This creates demand for natural language interfaces that translate user requests into SQL queries and REST API calls. While large language models (LLMs) show promise for structured code generation, they typically lack reliable knowledge of enterprise-specific schemas, endpoints, and documentation. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) addresses this limitation by grounding generation in external documentation. However, prior work largely studies SQL query generation and REST API call generation separately, despite enterprise documentation environments often containing both database schemas and API specifications. We systematically evaluate standard RAG, Self-RAG, and CoRAG across SQL query generation, REST API call generation, and a combined task requiring routing between both operation types. Using SAP Transactional Banking as a realistic enterprise use case, we constructed an execution-validated dataset and compared retrieval strategies under database-only, API-only, and mixed-documentation settings. Retrieval augmentation proved essential for reliable enterprise structured generation, substantially improving performance over a no-retrieval baseline. CoRAG achieved the best results in the combined SQL query and REST API call setting, with statistically significant improvements in exact-match accuracy over standard RAG, primarily driven by stronger SQL query generation under mixed-documentation retrieval conditions. Overall, findings show that retrieval strategy substantially affects structured generation performance under mixed-documentation settings.