@inproceedings{gan-etal-2023-appraising,
title = "Re-appraising the Schema Linking for Text-to-{SQL}",
author = "Gan, Yujian and
Chen, Xinyun and
Purver, Matthew",
editor = "Rogers, Anna and
Boyd-Graber, Jordan and
Okazaki, Naoaki",
booktitle = "Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2023",
month = jul,
year = "2023",
address = "Toronto, Canada",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-acl.53",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2023.findings-acl.53",
pages = "835--852",
abstract = "Most text-to-SQL models, even though based on the same grammar decoder, generate the SQL structure first and then fill in the SQL slots with the correct schema items. This second step depends on schema linking: aligning the entity references in the question with the schema columns or tables. This is generally approached via Exact Match based Schema Linking (EMSL) within a neural network-based schema linking module. EMSL has become standard in text-to-SQL: many state-of-the-art models employ EMSL, with performance dropping significantly when the EMSL component is removed. In this work, however, we show that EMSL reduces robustness, rendering models vulnerable to synonym substitution and typos. Instead of relying on EMSL to make up for deficiencies in question-schema encoding, we show that using a pre-trained language model as an encoder can improve performance without using EMSL, giving a more robust model. We also study the design choice of the schema linking module, finding that a suitable design benefits performance and interoperability. Finally, based on the above study of schema linking, we introduce the grammar linking to help model align grammar references in the question with the SQL keywords.",
}
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<abstract>Most text-to-SQL models, even though based on the same grammar decoder, generate the SQL structure first and then fill in the SQL slots with the correct schema items. This second step depends on schema linking: aligning the entity references in the question with the schema columns or tables. This is generally approached via Exact Match based Schema Linking (EMSL) within a neural network-based schema linking module. EMSL has become standard in text-to-SQL: many state-of-the-art models employ EMSL, with performance dropping significantly when the EMSL component is removed. In this work, however, we show that EMSL reduces robustness, rendering models vulnerable to synonym substitution and typos. Instead of relying on EMSL to make up for deficiencies in question-schema encoding, we show that using a pre-trained language model as an encoder can improve performance without using EMSL, giving a more robust model. We also study the design choice of the schema linking module, finding that a suitable design benefits performance and interoperability. Finally, based on the above study of schema linking, we introduce the grammar linking to help model align grammar references in the question with the SQL keywords.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Re-appraising the Schema Linking for Text-to-SQL
%A Gan, Yujian
%A Chen, Xinyun
%A Purver, Matthew
%Y Rogers, Anna
%Y Boyd-Graber, Jordan
%Y Okazaki, Naoaki
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2023
%D 2023
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Toronto, Canada
%F gan-etal-2023-appraising
%X Most text-to-SQL models, even though based on the same grammar decoder, generate the SQL structure first and then fill in the SQL slots with the correct schema items. This second step depends on schema linking: aligning the entity references in the question with the schema columns or tables. This is generally approached via Exact Match based Schema Linking (EMSL) within a neural network-based schema linking module. EMSL has become standard in text-to-SQL: many state-of-the-art models employ EMSL, with performance dropping significantly when the EMSL component is removed. In this work, however, we show that EMSL reduces robustness, rendering models vulnerable to synonym substitution and typos. Instead of relying on EMSL to make up for deficiencies in question-schema encoding, we show that using a pre-trained language model as an encoder can improve performance without using EMSL, giving a more robust model. We also study the design choice of the schema linking module, finding that a suitable design benefits performance and interoperability. Finally, based on the above study of schema linking, we introduce the grammar linking to help model align grammar references in the question with the SQL keywords.
%R 10.18653/v1/2023.findings-acl.53
%U https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-acl.53
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.findings-acl.53
%P 835-852
Markdown (Informal)
[Re-appraising the Schema Linking for Text-to-SQL](https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-acl.53) (Gan et al., Findings 2023)
ACL
- Yujian Gan, Xinyun Chen, and Matthew Purver. 2023. Re-appraising the Schema Linking for Text-to-SQL. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2023, pages 835–852, Toronto, Canada. Association for Computational Linguistics.