# Preprint reports text-to-SQL results using fewer training examples

_Published Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 4:01 PM EDT · AI, Science · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

Researchers report that a Qwen3-8B model trained with selected examples can outperform text-to-SQL methods trained on 20 times more data. Their LIMIT framework chose 796 examples for the BIRD benchmark and 863 for Spider, reporting execution scores of 69.1% and 88.9%, respectively.

The preprint describes filtering examples by difficulty, generating and checking reasoning steps, scoring example quality and optimizing coverage of database tables. Its results suggest a route to reducing the data needed to teach models to turn questions into database queries, though the reported performance comes from benchmark tests rather than production use.

## Sources

- [cs.AI updates on arXiv.org](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24186)

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Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/SGl_DJipxCob_zPtLm5_M5
Published: 2026-09-23T20:01:55.776Z
Story chronology: 2026-09-23T04:00:00.000Z
Retrieved: 2026-09-23T21:42:00.233Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)