🤖 AI Summary
This work addresses the limited effectiveness of traditional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approaches in querying structured, non-textual data—particularly numerical and highly structured datasets—using natural language. To overcome this, the authors propose an open-source solution that leverages a synthetic question-answering pair generation pipeline to create diverse training data capturing both user intent and data semantics. They fine-tune the DeepSeek-R1-Distill-8B model using 4-bit quantized low-rank adaptation (QLoRA) to generate executable query statements. Experiments on a public service accessibility dataset from the Durangaldea region in Spain demonstrate high accuracy across monolingual, multilingual, and unseen-location scenarios, confirming that small, domain-specific models can effectively and generalizably support natural language access to structured data without relying on large, closed-source models.
📝 Abstract
This paper presents an open source methodology for allowing users to query structured non textual datasets through natural language Unlike Retrieval Augmented Generation RAG which struggles with numerical and highly structured information our approach trains an LLM to generate executable queries To support this capability we introduce a principled pipeline for synthetic training data generation producing diverse question answer pairs that capture both user intent and the semantics of the underlying dataset We fine tune a compact model DeepSeek R1 Distill 8B using QLoRA with 4 bit quantization making the system suitable for deployment on commodity hardware We evaluate our approach on a dataset describing accessibility to essential services across Durangaldea Spain The fine tuned model achieves high accuracy across monolingual multilingual and unseen location scenarios demonstrating both robust generalization and reliable query generation Our results highlight that small domain specific models can achieve high precision for this task without relying on large proprietary LLMs making this methodology suitable for resource constrained environments and adaptable to broader multi dataset systems We evaluate our approach on a dataset describing accessibility to essential services across Durangaldea Spain The fine tuned model achieves high accuracy across monolingual multilingual and unseen location scenarios demonstrating both robust generalization and reliable query generation Our results highlight that small domain specific models can achieve high precision for this task without relying on large proprietary LLMs making this methodology suitable for resource constrained environments and adaptable to broader multi dataset systems.