Textual content-to-SQL translation, the duty of reworking pure language queries into structured SQL statements, is important for facilitating user-friendly database interactions. Nevertheless, the duty includes vital complexities, notably schema linking, dealing with compositional SQL syntax, and resolving ambiguities in person queries. Whereas Massive Language Fashions (LLMs) have proven strong capabilities throughout numerous domains, the efficacy of structured reasoning methods corresponding to Chain-of-Thought (CoT) inside text-to-SQL contexts stays restricted. Prior makes an attempt using zero-shot CoT or Direct Choice Optimization (DPO) with out structured reasoning yielded marginal enhancements, indicating the need for extra rigorous methodologies.
Snowflake introduces ExCoT, a structured framework designed to optimize open-source LLMs by the mixture of CoT reasoning and iterative choice optimization, particularly using off-policy and on-policy DPO guided solely by execution accuracy suggestions. ExCoT dispenses with exterior reward fashions and human annotations, relying as a substitute on internally generated reasoning steps and execution outcomes. The strategy operates in two principal phases: initially, it generates candidate CoT knowledge validated by off-policy DPO, forming the idea for supervised fine-tuning. Subsequently, the mannequin iteratively generates and refines CoT knowledge through on-policy DPO, incrementally enhancing accuracy by suggestions derived from execution correctness.
ExCoT employs detailed CoT reasoning, significantly adopting a divide-and-conquer technique whereby complicated queries are decomposed into less complicated sub-queries. Every sub-query is analyzed and independently resolved earlier than being built-in right into a coherent ultimate question. This structured decomposition allows the mannequin to handle the complexity and nested constructions widespread in SQL operations extra successfully. Execution-based verification serves because the core mechanism for correctness analysis, the place generated queries are validated by evaluating their execution outputs towards ground-truth outcomes. Incorrect and proper queries are systematically paired, offering express alerts for preference-based studying. The iterative refinement within the on-policy DPO part progressively enhances the mannequin’s reasoning accuracy.
Experimental analysis of ExCoT demonstrated vital enhancements in execution accuracy. Particularly, with the LLaMA-3.1 70B mannequin, ExCoT elevated execution accuracy on the BIRD growth set from 57.37% to 68.51%, and elevated Spider take a look at set efficiency from 78.81% to 86.59%. Comparable efficiency enhancements have been recorded with the Qwen-2.5-Coder 32B mannequin. These outcomes place ExCoT as a number one strategy in single-model evaluations for these benchmarks, surpassing established strategies corresponding to XiYanSQL and proprietary fashions together with OpenAI variants. Notably, the enhancements persistently maintained excessive question validity charges (exceeding 98%), confirming enhancements in semantic correctness alongside syntactic precision.
In conclusion, ExCoT represents a methodical development in structured reasoning optimization for open-source LLMs utilized to text-to-SQL duties. By integrating structured CoT reasoning with choice optimization, guided solely by execution-based suggestions, ExCoT successfully addresses limitations recognized in earlier strategies. Its iterative refinement functionality ensures steady enchancment with out dependence on exterior reward constructions or guide annotations. Additional analysis may discover extending this framework to extra intricate schema environments and extra structured reasoning duties, thus broadening the applicability and reliability of LLMs in structured question era contexts.
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