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Autori principali: Stoisser, Josefa Lia, Martell, Marc Boubnovski, Fauqueur, Julien
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.00016
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author Stoisser, Josefa Lia
Martell, Marc Boubnovski
Fauqueur, Julien
author_facet Stoisser, Josefa Lia
Martell, Marc Boubnovski
Fauqueur, Julien
contents This work reframes the Text-to-SQL task as a pathway for teaching large language models (LLMs) to reason over and manipulate tabular data--moving beyond the traditional focus on query generation. We propose a two-stage framework that leverages SQL supervision to develop transferable table reasoning capabilities. First, we synthesize detailed chain-of-thought (CoT) traces from real-world SQL queries, providing step-by-step, clause-level supervision that teaches the model how to traverse, filter, and aggregate table fields. Second, we introduce a Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) reinforcement learning objective that connects SQL execution accuracy to generalizable reasoning by encouraging steps that extend beyond task-specific syntax and transfer across datasets. Empirically, our approach improves performance on standard Text-to-SQL benchmarks and achieves substantial gains on reasoning-intensive datasets such as BIRD and CRT-QA, demonstrating enhanced generalization and interpretability. Specifically, the distilled-quantized LLaMA model achieved a relative 33.9\% increase in accuracy when trained on Text-to-SQL tasks, while Qwen achieved a relative 14.5\% increase. These results suggest that SQL can serve not only as a target formalism but also as an effective scaffold for learning robust, transferable reasoning over structured data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_00016
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sparks of Tabular Reasoning via Text2SQL Reinforcement Learning
Stoisser, Josefa Lia
Martell, Marc Boubnovski
Fauqueur, Julien
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
This work reframes the Text-to-SQL task as a pathway for teaching large language models (LLMs) to reason over and manipulate tabular data--moving beyond the traditional focus on query generation. We propose a two-stage framework that leverages SQL supervision to develop transferable table reasoning capabilities. First, we synthesize detailed chain-of-thought (CoT) traces from real-world SQL queries, providing step-by-step, clause-level supervision that teaches the model how to traverse, filter, and aggregate table fields. Second, we introduce a Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) reinforcement learning objective that connects SQL execution accuracy to generalizable reasoning by encouraging steps that extend beyond task-specific syntax and transfer across datasets. Empirically, our approach improves performance on standard Text-to-SQL benchmarks and achieves substantial gains on reasoning-intensive datasets such as BIRD and CRT-QA, demonstrating enhanced generalization and interpretability. Specifically, the distilled-quantized LLaMA model achieved a relative 33.9\% increase in accuracy when trained on Text-to-SQL tasks, while Qwen achieved a relative 14.5\% increase. These results suggest that SQL can serve not only as a target formalism but also as an effective scaffold for learning robust, transferable reasoning over structured data.
title Sparks of Tabular Reasoning via Text2SQL Reinforcement Learning
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.00016