We introduce FlexTab, a flexible encoder-decoder architecture for in-context learning on tabular data that pairs a single, task-agnostic encoder with a suite of task-specific decoders. Unlike existing tabular in-context learners, which entangle feature representations with a specific prediction target, our design produces \textit{target-agnostic} row embeddings that can be leveraged across a wide range of downstream tasks within a table-native in-context learning setup.
arXiv:2602. 13697v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Relational databases (RDBs) contain vast amounts of heterogeneous tabular information that can be exploited for predictive modeling purposes.
By Linjie Xu, Yanlin Zhang, Quan Gan, Minjie Wang, David Wipf
The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can leverage frozen relational‑transformer embeddings by injecting them as soft tokens. Using a learned MLP projection and LoRA adaptation, the authors fine‑tune Qwen3.5‑4B on chain‑of‑thought reasoning traces and group‑based reinforcement learning, then evaluate on ten binary classification tasks across six RelBench databases. The hybrid approach consistently underperforms the standalone relational transformer, showing sensitivity to serialization format, token budget, and RL stability, leading the authors to conclude that stronger alignment objectives and schema‑aware design are needed for reliable relational prediction.
By Francisco Galuppo Azevedo, Clarissa Lima Loures
The paper introduces TEmBed, a unified benchmark for evaluating tabular embeddings across four representation levels—cell, row, column, and table—using a diverse set of models. It demonstrates that the best model depends on the specific task and representation level, providing practical guidance for selecting embeddings in real-world applications. The study aims to facilitate the development of more general-purpose tabular representation models.
By Liane Vogel, Kavitha Srinivas, Niharika D'Souza, Sola Shirai, Oktie Hassanzadeh, Horst Samulowitz
arXiv:2607. 05476v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Given a relational database (RDB) storing heterogeneous tabular information, how can we predict missing (or future) values in some target column of interest?
By Linjie Xu, David Wipf
arXiv:2609.01292v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Relational Deep Learning (RDL) has become a powerful paradigm for learning from multi-tabular data. However, manually defining RDL prediction tasks i...
By Oleksii Kolesnichenko, Jakub Pele\v{s}ka, Gustav \v{S}\'{\i}r