{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/a-survey-of-nl2sql-with-large-language-models","title":"A Survey of Text-to-SQL in the Era of LLMs: Where are we, and where are we going?","arxiv_id":"2408.05109","date":"2024-08-09","proceeding":null,"authors":["Xinyu Liu","Shuyu Shen","Boyan Li","Peixian Ma","Runzhi Jiang","Yuxin Zhang","Ju Fan","Guoliang Li","Nan Tang","Yuyu Luo"],"abstract":"Translating users' natural language queries (NL) into SQL queries (i.e., Text-to-SQL, a.k.a. NL2SQL) can significantly reduce barriers to accessing relational databases and support various commercial applications. The performance of Text-to-SQL has been greatly enhanced with the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs). In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of Text-to-SQL techniques powered by LLMs, covering its entire lifecycle from the following four aspects: (1) Model: Text-to-SQL translation techniques that tackle not only NL ambiguity and under-specification, but also properly map NL with database schema and instances; (2) Data: From the collection of training data, data synthesis due to training data scarcity, to Text-to-SQL benchmarks; (3) Evaluation: Evaluating Text-to-SQL methods from multiple angles using different metrics and granularities; and (4) Error Analysis: analyzing Text-to-SQL errors to find the root cause and guiding Text-to-SQL models to evolve. Moreover, we offer a rule of thumb for developing Text-to-SQL solutions. Finally, we discuss the research challenges and open problems of Text-to-SQL in the LLMs era.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.05109v5","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.05109v5.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"a-survey-of-nl2sql-with-large-language-models","repo_url":"https://github.com/hkustdial/nl2sql_handbook","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"natural-language-queries","task_name":"Natural Language Queries"},{"task_slug":"text-to-sql","task_name":"Text to SQL"},{"task_slug":"text-to-sql","task_name":"Text-To-SQL"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2408.05109","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2408.05109"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/hkustdial/nl2sql_handbook","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"summary":{"ran":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":1,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":1,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"01f8212987be7de4","entry":"generate_report_database_complexity","repo":"hkustdial/nl2sql_handbook","repo_kind":"official","path":"src/dataset_analyze/utils.py","file_url":"https://github.com/hkustdial/nl2sql_handbook/blob/HEAD/src/dataset_analyze/utils.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran","verification_level":1,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"01f8212987be7de4"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}