HarnessSQL: Harness-Native Training for SQL Agents in Realistic Database Environments
Mirrored from arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.
Computer Science > Computation and Language
arXiv:2610.12274 (cs)
[Submitted on 8 Oct 2026]
Title:HarnessSQL: Harness-Native Training for SQL Agents in Realistic Database Environments
View a PDF of the paper titled HarnessSQL: Harness-Native Training for SQL Agents in Realistic Database Environments, by Haolin Yang and 5 other authors
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Text-to-SQL models are commonly trained to map questions directly to static queries, whereas real-world database agents operate through stateful, multi-turn interaction with live databases -- inspecting schemas, executing probe queries, diagnosing errors, and revising hypotheses. This creates a critical train-deploy mismatch, as the execution harness that mediates this interaction is introduced only at inference time. To bridge this gap, we propose HarnessSQL, a harness-native post-training framework that preserves the full interaction structure throughout both supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning. HarnessSQL builds isolated, executable database environments paired with hidden execution oracles, rolls out teachers directly inside the target SQL harness, and retains only verified trajectories for full-sequence SFT, followed by execution-reward RL. Across Spider 2.0-SQLite, HarnessSQL dramatically boosts the execution accuracy of compact models, raising Qwen3-8B from 15.5% to 45.2% and Qwen3-14B from 22.2% to 54.8%, while transferring effectively to out-of-distribution interactive benchmarks such as BIRD-Interact and LiveSQLBench. Our findings demonstrate that training database agents directly within their execution harness is essential for mastering complex, long-horizon database workflows.
| Subjects: | Computation and Language (cs.CL) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2610.12274 [cs.CL] |
| (or arXiv:2610.12274v1 [cs.CL] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.12274
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
|
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
- View PDF
- HTML (experimental)
- TeX Source
View a PDF of the paper titled HarnessSQL: Harness-Native Training for SQL Agents in Realistic Database Environments, by Haolin Yang and 5 other authors
Additional Features
References & Citations
Loading...
Bookmark
Bibliographic Tools
Code, Data, Media
Demos
Related Papers
About arXivLabs
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Discussion (0)
Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.
Sign in →No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.