# DSABench: Benchmarking Source Discovery, Coordination, and Execution for Multi-Database Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.14700 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14700/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16789/) (2023)
- [Datasheets for Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09010/) (2018)
- [AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03688/) (2023)
- [BEIR: A Heterogenous Benchmark for Zero-shot Evaluation of Information Retrieval Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08663/) (2021)
- [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)
- [GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12983/) (2023)
- [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)
- [PICARD: Parsing Incrementally for Constrained Auto-Regressive Decoding from Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05093/) (2021)
- [Spider 2.0: Evaluating Language Models on Real-World Enterprise Text-to-SQL Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07763/) (2024)
- [Binding Language Models in Symbolic Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02875/) (2022)
- [Data Interpreter: An LLM Agent For Data Science](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18679/) (2024)
- [RESDSQL: Decoupling Schema Linking and Skeleton Parsing for Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05965/) (2023)
- [CoSQL: A Conversational Text-to-SQL Challenge Towards Cross-Domain Natural Language Interfaces to Databases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.05378/) (2019)
- [CHESS: Contextual Harnessing for Efficient SQL Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16755/) (2024)
- [SParC: Cross-Domain Semantic Parsing in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02285/) (2019)
- [CHASE-SQL: Multi-Path Reasoning and Preference Optimized Candidate Selection in Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01943/) (2024)
- [Improving Text-to-SQL Evaluation Methodology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09029/) (2018)
- [Semantic Evaluation for Text-to-SQL with Distilled Test Suites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02840/) (2020)
- [DSBench: How Far Are Data Science Agents from Becoming Data Science Experts?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.07703/) (2024)
- [Dr.Spider: A Diagnostic Evaluation Benchmark towards Text-to-SQL Robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08881/) (2023)
- [LinkAlign: Scalable Schema Linking for Real-World Large-Scale Multi-Database Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18596/) (2025)
- [Apache Calcite: A Foundational Framework for Optimized Query Processing Over Heterogeneous Data Sources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10233/) (2018)
- [PRACTIQ: A Practical Conversational Text-to-SQL dataset with Ambiguous and Unanswerable Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11076/) (2024)
- [DBCopilot: Natural Language Querying over Massive Databases via Schema Routing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03463/) (2023)
- [DBRouting: Routing End User Queries to Databases for Answerability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16220/) (2025)
- [MDB-Link: Hierarchical Schema Linking for Multi-Database Text-to-SQL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09588/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Most text-to-SQL benchmarks provide the target database. In a large data catalog, however, choosing the sources is part of the problem: an agent must find every database needed for a request, determine how their results fit together, and execute the resulting workflow. We present DSABench to evaluate these capabilities jointly. Its 815 human-reviewed tasks draw on Spider, BIRD, and LiveSQLBench; 618 require several databases to contribute, and 105 allow more than one interpretation of the required sources. Executable contracts define source participation, cross-source dependencies, and source-local execution, while RouteEnv lets agents inspect public catalog evidence without revealing the gold annotations. In our routing-only study across seven model backends, the highest RA-Set score is 60.55%, compared with a highest RA-Graph score of 34.66% when coordination requirements are included. The gap becomes more pronounced when execution is required. Across four backends, median non-privileged Route+Exec-Graph success ranges from 6.69% to 7.98% without clarification and from 11.44% to 13.25% with one clarification; the best observed clarified configuration reaches 16.99%. On ambiguous tasks, clarification improves exact branch-source recovery by 39.8-43.2 percentage points. These findings illustrate why retrieving plausible databases or producing correct local SQL is not enough: an agent must carry the right information through the entire multi-database workflow.