Systematic Analysis of NL2SQL Pipeline Optimizations and Their Interactions

Jul 14, 2026

A new preprint systematically examines how various NL2SQL pipeline extensions—such as the NatSQL intermediate representation, preprocessing, synthetic data fine-tuning, and a novel reranker—interact when integrated into two backbone models, SmBoP and RASAT. Through ablation and Shapley analyses, the study finds that combining all components does not necessarily yield the best performance; instead, the effectiveness of each extension depends on its interactions with the baseline and other components. These findings challenge the assumption that more features always improve NL2SQL systems.

Why it matters: The work offers practical guidance for building more efficient NL2SQL models by clarifying how different pipeline optimizations interact.

Full story at: arXiv Computation and Language ↗