| --- |
| pipeline_tag: text-generation |
| library_name: transformers |
| license: cc-by-nc-4.0 |
| tags: |
| - text-to-sql |
| - reinforcement-learning |
| --- |
| |
|
|
| # SLM-SQL: An Exploration of Small Language Models for Text-to-SQL |
|
|
| ### Important Links |
|
|
| 📖[Arxiv Paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22478) | |
| 🤗[HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/collections/cycloneboy/slm-sql-688b02f99f958d7a417658dc) | |
| 🤖[ModelScope](https://modelscope.cn/collections/SLM-SQL-624bb6a60e9643) | |
|
|
| ## News |
|
|
| + `July 31, 2025`: Upload model to modelscope and huggingface. |
| + `July 30, 2025`: Publish the paper to arxiv |
|
|
| ## Introduction |
|
|
| > Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong performance in translating natural language questions into SQL |
| > queries (Text-to-SQL). In contrast, small language models (SLMs) ranging from 0.5B to 1.5B parameters currently |
| > underperform on Text-to-SQL tasks due to their limited logical reasoning capabilities. However, SLMs offer inherent |
| > advantages in inference speed and suitability for edge deployment. To explore their potential in Text-to-SQL |
| > applications, we leverage recent advancements in post-training techniques. Specifically, we used the open-source |
| > SynSQL-2.5M dataset to construct two derived datasets: SynSQL-Think-916K for SQL generation and |
| > SynSQL-Merge-Think-310K |
| > for SQL merge revision. We then applied supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning-based post-training to the |
| > SLM, followed by inference using a corrective self-consistency approach. Experimental results validate the |
| > effectiveness |
| > and generalizability of our method, SLM-SQL. On the BIRD development set, the five evaluated models achieved an |
| > average |
| > improvement of 31.4 points. Notably, the 0.5B model reached 56.87\% execution accuracy (EX), while the 1.5B model |
| > achieved 67.08\% EX. We will release our dataset, model, and code to github: https://github.com/CycloneBoy/slm_sql. |
| |
| ### Framework |
| |
| <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CycloneBoy/slm_sql/main/data/image/slmsql_framework.png" height="500" alt="slmsql_framework"> |
| |
| ### Main Results |
| |
| <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CycloneBoy/slm_sql/main/data/image/slmsql_bird_result.png" height="500" alt="slm_sql_result"> |
| |
| |
| <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CycloneBoy/slm_sql/main/data/image/slmsql_bird_main.png" height="500" alt="slmsql_bird_main"> |
| |
| <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CycloneBoy/slm_sql/main/data/image/slmsql_spider_main.png" height="500" alt="slmsql_spider_main"> |
| |
| Performance Comparison of different Text-to-SQL methods on BIRD dev and test dataset. |
| |
| <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CycloneBoy/slm_sql/main/data/image/slmsql_ablation_study.png" height="300" alt="slmsql_ablation_study"> |
| |
| ## Model |
| |
| | **Model** | Base Model | Train Method | Modelscope | HuggingFace | |
| |------------------------------------------|------------------------------|--------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |
| | SLM-SQL-Base-0.5B | Qwen2.5-Coder-0.5B-Instruct | SFT | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-0.5B) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-0.5B) | |
| | SLM-SQL-0.5B | Qwen2.5-Coder-0.5B-Instruct | SFT + GRPO | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-0.5B) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-0.5B) | |
| | CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-0.5B-Instruct | Qwen2.5-Coder-0.5B-Instruct | SFT + GRPO | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-0.5B-Instruct) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-0.5B-Instruct) | |
| | SLM-SQL-Base-1.5B | Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct | SFT | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-1.5B) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-1.5B) | |
| | SLM-SQL-1.5B | Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct | SFT + GRPO | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-1.5B) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-1.5B) | |
| | CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct | Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct | SFT + GRPO | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct) | |
| | SLM-SQL-Base-0.6B | Qwen3-0.6B | SFT | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-0.6B) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-0.6B) | |
| | SLM-SQL-0.6B | Qwen3-0.6B | SFT + GRPO | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-0.6B) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-0.6B) | |
| | SLM-SQL-Base-1.3B | deepseek-coder-1.3b-instruct | SFT | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-1.3B ) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-1.3B ) | |
| | SLM-SQL-1.3B | deepseek-coder-1.3b-instruct | SFT + GRPO | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-1.3B ) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-1.3B ) | |
| | SLM-SQL-Base-1B | Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct | SFT | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/models/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-1B ) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/cycloneboy/SLM-SQL-Base-1B ) | |
| |
| ## Dataset |
| |
| | **Dataset** | Modelscope | HuggingFace | |
| |----------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |
| | SynsQL-Think-916k | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/datasets/cycloneboy/SynsQL-Think-916k) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/datasets/cycloneboy/SynsQL-Think-916k) | |
| | SynsQL-Merge-Think-310k | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/datasets/cycloneboy/SynsQL-Merge-Think-310k) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/datasets/cycloneboy/SynsQL-Merge-Think-310k) | |
| | bird train and dev dataset | [🤖 Modelscope](https://modelscope.cn/datasets/cycloneboy/bird_train) | [🤗 HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/datasets/cycloneboy/bird_train) | |
| |
| ## TODO |
| |
| - [ ] Release inference code |
| - [ ] Upload Model |
| - [ ] Release training code |
| - [ ] Fix bug |
| - [ ] Update doc |
| |
| ## Thanks to the following projects |
| |
| - [csc_sql](https://github.com/CycloneBoy/csc_sql) |
| - [open-r1](https://github.com/huggingface/open-r1) |
| - [OmniSQL](https://github.com/RUCKBReasoning/OmniSQL) |
| |
| ## Citation |
| |
| ```bibtex |
| |
| @misc{sheng2025slmsqlexplorationsmalllanguage, |
| title={SLM-SQL: An Exploration of Small Language Models for Text-to-SQL}, |
| author={Lei Sheng and Shuai-Shuai Xu}, |
| year={2025}, |
| eprint={2507.22478}, |
| archivePrefix={arXiv}, |
| primaryClass={cs.CL}, |
| url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22478}, |
| } |
| |
| @misc{sheng2025cscsqlcorrectiveselfconsistencytexttosql, |
| title={CSC-SQL: Corrective Self-Consistency in Text-to-SQL via Reinforcement Learning}, |
| author={Lei Sheng and Shuai-Shuai Xu}, |
| year={2025}, |
| eprint={2505.13271}, |
| archivePrefix={arXiv}, |
| primaryClass={cs.CL}, |
| url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.13271}, |
| } |
| ``` |
