# Training Table Question Answering via SQL Query Decomposition

Source: [Training Table Question Answering via SQL Query Decomposition](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa72481e209131cea5589d>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-26T02:22:12.513Z

Authors: Rapha\\"el Mouravieff, Benjamin Piwowarski, Sylvain Lamprier

Published: 2024-02-19T13:56:16.000Z

## Abstract

Table Question-Answering involves both understanding the natural language query and grounding it in the context of the input table to extract the relevant information. In this context, many methods have highlighted the benefits of intermediate pre-training from SQL queries. However, while most approaches aim at generating final answers from inputs directly, we claim that there is better to do with SQL queries during training. By learning to imitate a restricted portion of SQL-like algebraic operations, we show that their execution flow provides intermediate supervision steps that allow increased generalization and structural reasoning compared with classical approaches of the field. Our study bridges the gap between semantic parsing and direct answering methods and provides useful insights regarding what types of operations should be predicted by a generative architecture or be preferably executed by an external algorithm.

## Recorded benchmark results

A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage.

## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13288>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.13288.pdf>)