REFORMER: A ChatGPT-Driven Data Synthesis Framework Elevating Text-to-SQL Models

Abstract: The existing Text-to-SQL models suffer from a shortage of training data, inhibiting their ability to fully facilitate the applications of SQL queries in new domains. To address this challenge, various data synthesis techniques have been employed to generate more diverse and higher quality data. In this paper, we propose REFORMER, a framework that leverages ChatGPT's prowess without the need for additional training, to facilitate the synthesis of (question, SQL query) pairs tailored to new domains. Our data augmentation approach is based on a "retrieve-and-edit" method, where we generate new questions by filling masked question using explanation of SQL queries with the help of ChatGPT. Furthermore, we demonstrate that cycle consistency remains a valuable method of validation when applied appropriately. Our experimental results show that REFORMER consistently outperforms previous data augmentation methods. To further investigate the power of ChatGPT and create a general data augmentation method, we also generate the new data by paraphrasing the question in the dataset and by paraphrasing the description of a new SQL query that is generated by ChatGPT as well. Our results affirm that paraphrasing questions generated by ChatGPT help augment the original data.