CSC-SQL: Corrective Self-Consistency in Text-to-SQL via Reinforcement Learning
This repository contains the CscSQL-Grpo-Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct
model, presented in the paper CSC-SQL: Corrective Self-Consistency in Text-to-SQL via Reinforcement Learning.
Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in translating natural language questions about relational databases into SQL queries. In particular, test-time scaling techniques such as Self-Consistency and Self-Correction can enhance SQL generation accuracy by increasing computational effort during inference. However, these methods have notable limitations: Self-Consistency may select suboptimal outputs despite majority votes, while Self-Correction typically addresses only syntactic errors. To leverage the strengths of both approaches, we propose CSC-SQL, a novel method that integrates Self-Consistency and Self-Correction. CSC-SQL selects the two most frequently occurring outputs from parallel sampling and feeds them into a merge revision model for correction. Additionally, we employ the Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) algorithm to fine-tune both the SQL generation and revision models via reinforcement learning, significantly enhancing output quality. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness and generalizability of CSC-SQL. On the BIRD private test set, our 7B model achieves 71.72% execution accuracy, while the 32B model achieves 73.67%.
Code
The official implementation, including training and evaluation scripts, can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/CycloneBoy/csc_sql
Introduction
CSC-SQL is a novel method that integrates Self-Consistency and Self-Correction to enhance SQL generation accuracy. It addresses the limitations of existing test-time scaling techniques by combining their strengths. The method involves selecting the two most frequently occurring outputs from parallel sampling and feeding them into a merge revision model for correction. Furthermore, the Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) algorithm is employed to fine-tune both the SQL generation and revision models via reinforcement learning, leading to significantly enhanced output quality.
The framework overview is illustrated below:
Main Results
The CSC-SQL model achieves state-of-the-art results in Text-to-SQL generation. On the BIRD private test set, the 7B model achieves 71.72% execution accuracy, while the 32B model achieves 73.67%.
Performance Comparison of different Text-to-SQL methods on BIRD dev and test dataset:
Models and Datasets
The project provides various models and datasets, which can be found on Hugging Face and ModelScope:
Model and Dataset | Modelscope | HuggingFace |
---|---|---|
bird train and dev dataset | 🤖 Modelscope | 🤗 HuggingFace |
CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-3B-Instruct | 🤖 Modelscope | 🤗 HuggingFace |
CscSQL-Merge-Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct | 🤖 Modelscope | 🤗 HuggingFace |
CscSQL-Grpo-Qwen2.5-Coder-3B-Instruct | 🤖 Modelscope | 🤗 HuggingFace |
CscSQL-Grpo-XiYanSQL-QwenCoder-3B-2502 | 🤖 Modelscope | 🤗 HuggingFace |
CscSQL-Grpo-Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct | 🤖 Modelscope | 🤗 HuggingFace |
CscSQL-Grpo-XiYanSQL-QwenCoder-7B-2502 | 🤖 Modelscope | 🤗 HuggingFace |
Usage
You can use this model with the Hugging Face transformers
library. Here's a quick example for Text-to-SQL generation following the Qwen chat template:
import torch
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForCausalLM, GenerationConfig
model_name = "cycloneboy/CscSQL-Grpo-Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name, trust_remote_code=True)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(
model_name,
device_map="auto",
torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
trust_remote_code=True
).eval()
# Example natural language question and a simplified database schema
question = "List the names of all employees who work in the 'Sales' department."
schema = """
CREATE TABLE employees (
employee_id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(255),
department_id INT
);
CREATE TABLE departments (
department_id INT PRIMARY KEY,
department_name VARCHAR(255)
);
"""
# Construct the prompt according to the model's expected input format for Text-to-SQL
# This is typically a combination of natural language question and the schema
user_prompt = f"Question: {question}
Schema: {schema}
SQL:"
messages = [
{"role": "user", "content": user_prompt}
]
# Apply the chat template to format the input for the model
text = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(messages, tokenize=False, add_generation_prompt=True)
model_inputs = tokenizer([text], return_tensors="pt").to(model.device)
# Define generation configuration
generation_config = GenerationConfig(
do_sample=True,
temperature=0.7,
top_p=0.8,
top_k=20,
repetition_penalty=1.05,
max_new_tokens=512, # Adjust as needed for SQL query length
eos_token_id=tokenizer.eos_token_id,
pad_token_id=tokenizer.pad_token_id,
)
# Generate the SQL query
generated_ids = model.generate(
model_inputs.input_ids,
generation_config=generation_config
)
# Decode the generated SQL, skipping the input prompt
generated_sql = tokenizer.batch_decode(generated_ids[:, model_inputs.input_ids.shape[1]:], skip_special_tokens=True)[0]
print("Generated SQL Query:")
print(generated_sql)
Citation
If you find our work helpful or inspiring, please feel free to cite it:
@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},
}
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