PolySQL: Scaling Text-to-SQL Evaluation Across SQL Dialects via Automated Backend Isomorphism
Text-to-SQL models are routinely benchmarked on SQLite alone, masking their fragility across production database engines. PolySQL addresses this blind spot by enabling cross-dialect evaluation without manual query translation, using normalized execution results instead. The method achieves complete query coverage where existing transpilation tools fail on complex SQL. This matters because it exposes a systematic evaluation gap in LLM-to-database research: SQLite performance is a poor proxy for real-world deployment readiness. Insiders building or assessing SQL generation systems now have a scalable way to measure true multi-engine robustness.
Modelwire context
ExplainerThe deeper issue PolySQL surfaces is not just that SQLite is overused, but that the entire text-to-SQL evaluation pipeline has been shaped by what is easy to instrument rather than what reflects production reality. Most enterprise databases run on PostgreSQL, MySQL, or proprietary engines with meaningfully different SQL semantics, and no prior tooling could handle the complex query edge cases that break transpilation.
This fits squarely into a pattern visible across recent Modelwire coverage: benchmarks that measure the wrong thing are quietly distorting how the field allocates effort. CoCoReviewBench, covered the same day, makes an almost identical argument about AI reviewer evaluation, where surface-level metrics mask genuine capability gaps. PolySQL is that same critique applied to SQL generation. The connection is not superficial: both papers are essentially arguing that the infrastructure used to declare progress is unreliable, which means downstream decisions about which models to deploy are built on shaky ground.
Watch whether major text-to-SQL benchmarks like BIRD or Spider adopt PolySQL-style multi-dialect evaluation within the next two release cycles. If they do not, the gap PolySQL identifies will persist in leaderboard rankings even as the paper circulates.
Coverage we drew on
This analysis is generated by Modelwire’s editorial layer from our archive and the summary above. It is not a substitute for the original reporting. How we write it.
Modelwire Editorial
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