Abstract
Recent advancements in large language models have introduced new capabilities for reasoning over structured data, particularly through program-aided tools that can analyze tables. However, many existing methods address single-table scenarios or assume that the relevant tables are already provided. In practice, users often issue complex data exploration queries over entire databases, where relevant information may be distributed across multiple relations. In this work, we introduce DBRAG, a retrieval-augmented generation framework tailored for multi-table question answering. DBRAG first retrieves candidate tables using an offline table index, enriches their summaries with query-relevant rows, and uses an LLM to rerank the candidates. A program-aided reasoner then selects the required tables and executes operations over their full contents, keeping the initial prompt context compact. Experiments on the Spider, GeoQuery, and ATIS datasets used in this study demonstrate improvements in table retrieval and multi-table question answering.
Keywords
Subject
Publication details
- Journal
- Not available
- Open access
- Green open access
Cite this article
APA 7
Ampofo, P. L., Kubo, R., & Difallah, D. (2026). DBRAG: Multi-Table Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Complex Database Queries. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/dbrag-multi-table-retrieval-augmented-generation-for-complex-database-queries
MLA 9
Ampofo, Prince Larbi, et al. "DBRAG: Multi-Table Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Complex Database Queries." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/dbrag-multi-table-retrieval-augmented-generation-for-complex-database-queries.
Chicago (author–date)
Ampofo, Prince Larbi, Ryoji Kubo, and Djellel Difallah. 2026. "DBRAG: Multi-Table Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Complex Database Queries." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/dbrag-multi-table-retrieval-augmented-generation-for-complex-database-queries.
Harvard
Ampofo, P. L., Kubo, R. and Difallah, D. (2026) 'DBRAG: Multi-Table Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Complex Database Queries', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/dbrag-multi-table-retrieval-augmented-generation-for-complex-database-queries.
Vancouver
Ampofo PL, Kubo R, Difallah D. DBRAG: Multi-Table Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Complex Database Queries. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/dbrag-multi-table-retrieval-augmented-generation-for-complex-database-queries
IEEE
P. L. Ampofo, R. Kubo, and D. Difallah, "DBRAG: Multi-Table Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Complex Database Queries," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/dbrag-multi-table-retrieval-augmented-generation-for-complex-database-queries.