# InRTL: Effective Intra-Inter Interaction Learning for Relational Tables

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12712 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12712/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Sep 2026.

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Transformers are RNNs: Fast Autoregressive Transformers with Linear Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16236/) (2020)
- [Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05027/) (2016)
- [Rethinking Attention with Performers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14794/) (2020)
- [Linformer: Self-Attention with Linear Complexity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04768/) (2020)
- [Revisiting Deep Learning Models for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11959/) (2021)
- [TabPFN: A Transformer That Solves Small Tabular Classification Problems in a Second](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01848/) (2022)
- [TabNet: Attentive Interpretable Tabular Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07442/) (2019)
- [Deep Neural Networks and Tabular Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01889/) (2021)
- [TabTransformer: Tabular Data Modeling Using Contextual Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06678/) (2020)
- [SAINT: Improved Neural Networks for Tabular Data via Row Attention and Contrastive Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01342/) (2021)
- [MiniLMv2: Multi-Head Self-Attention Relation Distillation for Compressing Pretrained Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15828/) (2020)
- [Pure Transformers are Powerful Graph Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02505/) (2022)
- [On Embeddings for Numerical Features in Tabular Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05556/) (2022)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Graphs with Heterophily: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07082/) (2022)
- [TransTab: Learning Transferable Tabular Transformers Across Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09328/) (2022)
- [RelBench: A Benchmark for Deep Learning on Relational Databases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20060/) (2024)
- [RelGNN: Composite Message Passing for Relational Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06784/) (2025)
- [Trompt: Towards a Better Deep Neural Network for Tabular Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18446/) (2023)
- [Boosting Relational Deep Learning with Pretrained Tabular Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04934/) (2025)
- [rLLM: Relational Table Learning with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20157/) (2024)
- [From Cluster Assumption to Graph Convolution: Graph-based Semi-Supervised Learning Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13599/) (2023)
- [Survey on Semantic Interpretation of Tabular Data: Challenges and Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11891/) (2024)
- [LakeMLB: Data Lake Machine Learning Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10441/) (2026)
- [TLSQL: Table Learning Structured Query Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14109/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Relational table learning has recently emerged as an important research direction for modeling multiple tables connected through primary key-foreign key (PK-FK) relationships. Despite recent advances, a principled modeling framework tailored to this task remains underexplored. In this paper, we propose Intra-Inter Relational Table Learning (InRTL), a unified framework that explicitly models dependencies both within and across relational tables. Specifically, InRTL formalizes two complementary interaction patterns: intra-table interactions, describing associations among rows within the same table, and inter-table interactions, describing dependencies between rows across PK-FK-linked tables. To model these dependencies, we develop a column-aware table encoder to generate initial row representations, followed by Transformer-based self-attention and cross-attention modules for intra-table and inter-table learning, respectively. To further improve scalability, InRTL incorporates linearized attention and heterogeneous graph neural networks to simplify the self-attention and cross-attention operations. Extensive experiments on ten datasets covering 24 real-world tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Code is available at https://github.com/W1nterFloW/InRTL.