The Stochastic Shift: A New Evaluation Paradigm for Text-to-SQL with AI Operators
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Abstract (arXiv)
SQL has been augmented with AI operators, enabling modern data analytics platforms to derive insights from both structured and unstructured data. We observe that while current Text-to-SQL systems can successfully generate these AI-augmented queries, reliably evaluating their correctness remains a critical open challenge. Current metrics, which rely on exact query results and deterministic execution, systematically fail against the flexible, non-deterministic outputs of AI operators. In this paper, we formalize these unique evaluation failure modes and introduce a Multilayered Evaluation Framework that decouples deterministic database logic from flexible AI semantics. We test our approach across both industry (BigQuery) and academic (ThalamusDB) systems. We demonstrate that traditional Execution Accuracy severely penalizes valid queries, achieving as low as a 25% detection rate for correct translations. Furthermore, even a state-of-the-art LLM-based autorater falsely rejects 32% of accurate queries due to the complexity of judging both relational and AI components simultaneously. By validating the standard relational logic and the AI operations separately, our framework achieves state-of-the-art overall accuracy across both platforms (up to 97.2%), proposing a reliable standard for benchmarking AI-powered SQL generators.
Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 11 of its 17 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Sep 2026.
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References · 11
- 2018Spider: A Large-Scale Human-Labeled Dataset for Complex and Cross-Domain Semantic Parsing and Text-to-SQL Taskcited by 1,139
- 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 832
- 2023Can LLM Already Serve as A Database Interface? A BIg Bench for Large-Scale Database Grounded Text-to-SQLscited by 688
- 2020Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-SQL with Distilled Test Suitescited by 126
- 2021Natural SQL: Making SQL Easier to Infer from Natural Language Specificationscited by 68
- 2023SQL-PaLM: Improved Large Language Model Adaptation for Text-to-SQL (extended)cited by 42
- 2024Semantic Operators: A Declarative Model for Rich, AI-based Data Processingcited by 34
- 2023Evaluating Cross-Domain Text-to-SQL Models and Benchmarkscited by 32
- 2026Grading Scale Impact on LLM-as-a-Judge: Human-LLM Alignment Is Highest on 0-5 Grading Scalecited by 20
- 2024TrustSQL: Benchmarking Text-to-SQL Reliability with Penalty-Based Scoringcited by 17
- 2025Cortex AISQL: A Production SQL Engine for Unstructured Datacited by 11
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