XiYan

What is XiYan MCP Server?

XiYan MCP Server is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server designed to facilitate natural language queries to databases. It leverages XiYanSQL, a state-of-the-art text-to-SQL Large Language Model (LLM), to convert natural language questions into SQL queries, enabling users to interact with their databases using plain English.

How to use XiYan MCP Server?

To use XiYan MCP Server, you first need to install it via pip (pip install xiyan-mcp-server) or from source. After installation, you configure the server using a YAML file, specifying the MCP transport protocol (stdio or sse), LLM settings (including API keys and URLs for general LLMs like GPT or Qwen, or the recommended XiYanSQL-QwenCoder model), and database connection details (supporting MySQL and PostgreSQL). Once configured, you can launch the server and integrate it with various MCP-compatible clients such as Claude Desktop, Cline, Goose, Cursor, or Witsy by setting up the appropriate command or URL in their respective configurations.

Key Features of XiYan MCP Server

• Natural Language Data Fetching: Seamlessly retrieve data from databases using natural language queries, powered by XiYanSQL.
• LLM Support: Compatibility with a range of LLMs, including general-purpose models (GPT, Qwenmax) and specialized Text-to-SQL SOTA models.
• Local Mode: Offers a pure local mode for enhanced security, allowing the model to run on your own server.
• Database Compatibility: Supports both MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.
• Resource Listing: Ability to list available tables as resources for easier data exploration.
• Table Content Reading: Allows reading the contents of specific tables.

Use Cases of XiYan MCP Server

• Building Local Data Assistants: Create intelligent data assistants that can answer questions about your database using natural language, without needing to write SQL queries.
• Enhanced Data Accessibility: Empower non-technical users to access and analyze database information directly through natural language.
• Secure Data Interaction: Utilize the local mode for sensitive data, ensuring that your data remains within your own environment.
• Integration with AI Tools: Integrate with various AI-powered desktop applications and development environments that support MCP, such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Goose, to enhance their data interaction capabilities.

FAQ from XiYan MCP Server

Q: What databases does XiYan MCP Server support?

A: Currently, XiYan MCP Server supports MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Q: Can I use my own local LLM with XiYan MCP Server?

A: Yes, XiYan MCP Server supports a pure local mode, allowing you to deploy and use the XiYanSQL-QwenCoder model on your own server for high security.

Q: How do I get an API key for the Dashscope version of XiYanSQL?

A: You need to send an email to godot.lzl@alibaba-inc.com with your name, email, and organization to request a key. Note that this service is for trial purposes.

Q: What is the recommended way to install XiYan MCP Server?

A: The recommended way is to install via pip: pip install xiyan-mcp-server. You can also install from the GitHub source for the development version.

Q: What if the server does not work?

A: You can contact the developers through their DingTalk group or Weibo for support.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Preview
  • Architecture
  • Best Practice
  • Tools Preview
• Installation
  • Installing from pip
  • Installing from Smithery.ai
• Configuration
  • LLM Configuration
    • General LLMs
    • Text-to-SQL SOTA model
    • Local Model
  • Database Configuration
    • MySQL
    • PostgreSQL
• Launch
  • Claude Desktop
  • Cline
  • Goose
  • Cursor
• It Does Not Work
• Citation

Features

• 🌐 Fetch data by natural language through XiYanSQL
• 🤖 Support general LLMs (GPT,qwenmax), Text-to-SQL SOTA model
• 💻 Support pure local mode (high security!)
• 📝 Support MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• 🖱️ List available tables as resources
• 🔧 Read table contents

Preview

Architecture

There are two ways to integrate this server in your project, as shown below: The left is remote mode, which is the default mode. It requires an API key to access the xiyanSQL-qwencoder-32B model from service provider (see Configuration). Another mode is local mode, which is more secure. It does not require the API key.

Best practice and reports

"Build a local data assistant using MCP + Modelscope API-Inference without writing a single line of code"

"Xiyan MCP on Modelscope"

Evaluation on MCPBench

The following figure illustrates the performance of the XiYan MCP server as measured by the MCPBench benchmark. The XiYan MCP server demonstrates superior performance compared to both the MySQL MCP server and the PostgreSQL MCP server, achieving a lead of 2-22 percentage points. The detailed experiment results can be found at MCPBench and the report "Evaluation Report on MCP Servers".

Tools Preview

• The tool get_data provides a natural language interface for retrieving data from a database. This server will convert the input natural language into SQL using a built-in model and call the database to return the query results.

• The {dialect}://{table_name} resource allows obtaining a portion of sample data from the database for model reference when a specific table_name is specified.

• The {dialect}:// resource will list the names of the current databases

Installation

Installing from pip

Python 3.11+ is required. You can install the server through pip, and it will install the latest version:

pip install xiyan-mcp-server

If you want to install the development version from source, you can install from source code on github:

pip install git+https://github.com/XGenerationLab/xiyan_mcp_server.git

Installing from Smithery.ai

See @XGenerationLab/xiyan_mcp_server

Not fully tested.

Configuration

You need a YAML config file to configure the server. A default config file is provided in config_demo.yml which looks like this:

mcp:
  transport: "stdio"
model:
  name: "XGenerationLab/XiYanSQL-QwenCoder-32B-2412"
  key: ""
  url: "https://api-inference.modelscope.cn/v1/"
database:
  host: "localhost"
  port: 3306
  user: "root"
  password: ""
  database: ""

MCP Configuration

You can set the transport protocol to stdio or sse.

STDIO

For stdio protocol, you can set just like this:

mcp:
  transport: "stdio"

SSE

For sse protocol, you can set mcp config as below:

mcp:
  transport: "sse"
  port: 8000
  log_level: "INFO"

The default port is 8000. You can change the port if needed. The default log level is ERROR. We recommend to set log level to INFO for more detailed information.

Other configurations like debug, host, sse_path, message_path can be customized as well, but normally you don't need to modify them.

LLM Configuration

Name is the name of the model to use, key is the API key of the model, url is the API url of the model. We support following models.

versions	general LLMs(GPT,qwenmax)	SOTA model by Modelscope	SOTA model by Dashscope	Local LLMs
description	basic, easy to use	best performance, stable, recommand	best performance, for trial	slow, high-security
name	the official model name (e.g. gpt-3.5-turbo,qwen-max)	XGenerationLab/XiYanSQL-QwenCoder-32B-2412	xiyansql-qwencoder-32b	xiyansql-qwencoder-3b
key	the API key of the service provider (e.g. OpenAI, Alibaba Cloud)	the API key of modelscope	the API key via email	""
url	the endpoint of the service provider (e.g."https://api.openai.com/v1")	https://api-inference.modelscope.cn/v1/	https://xiyan-stream.biz.aliyun.com/service/api/xiyan-sql	http://localhost:5090

General LLMs

If you want to use the general LLMs, e.g. gpt3.5, you can directly config like this:

model:
  name: "gpt-3.5-turbo"
  key: "YOUR KEY "
  url: "https://api.openai.com/v1"
database:

If you want to use Qwen from Alibaba, e.g. Qwen-max, you can use following config:

model:
  name: "qwen-max"
  key: "YOUR KEY "
  url: "https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1"
database:

Text-to-SQL SOTA model

We recommend the XiYanSQL-qwencoder-32B (https://github.com/XGenerationLab/XiYanSQL-QwenCoder), which is the SOTA model in text-to-sql, see Bird benchmark. There are two ways to use the model. You can use either of them. (1) Modelscope, (2) Alibaba Cloud DashScope.

(1) Modelscope version

You need to apply a key of API-inference from Modelscope, https://www.modelscope.cn/docs/model-service/API-Inference/intro Then you can use the following config:

model:
  name: "XGenerationLab/XiYanSQL-QwenCoder-32B-2412"
  key: ""
  url: "https://api-inference.modelscope.cn/v1/"

Read our model description for more details.

(2) Dashscope version

We deployed the model on Alibaba Cloud DashScope, so you need to set the following environment variables: Send me your email to get the key. ( godot.lzl@alibaba-inc.com ) In the email, please attach the following information:

name: "YOUR NAME",
email: "YOUR EMAIL",
organization: "your college or Company or Organization"

We will send you a key according to your email. And you can fill the key in the yml file. The key will be expired by 1 month or 200 queries or other legal restrictions.

model:
  name: "xiyansql-qwencoder-32b"
  key: "KEY"
  url: "https://xiyan-stream.biz.aliyun.com/service/api/xiyan-sql"

Note: this model service is just for trial, if you need to use it in production, please contact us.

(3) Local version

Alternatively, you can also deploy the model XiYanSQL-qwencoder-32B on your own server. See Local Model for more details.

Database Configuration

host, port, user, password, database are the connection information of the database.

You can use local or any remote databases. Now we support MySQL and PostgreSQL(more dialects soon).

MySQL

database:
  host: "localhost"
  port: 3306
  user: "root"
  password: ""
  database: ""

PostgreSQL

Step 1: Install Python packages

pip install psycopg2

Step 2: prepare the config.yml like this:

database:
  dialect: "postgresql"
  host: "localhost"
  port: 5432
  user: ""
  password: ""
  database: ""

Note that dialect should be postgresql for postgresql.

Launch

Server Launch

If you want to launch server with sse, you have to run the following command in a terminal:

YML=path/to/yml python -m xiyan_mcp_server

Then you should see the information on http://localhost:8000/sse in your browser. (Defaultly, change if your mcp server runs on other host/port)

Otherwise, if you use stdio transport protocol, you usually declare the mcp server command in specific mcp application instead of launching it in a terminal. However, you can still debug with this command if needed.

Client Setting

Claude Desktop

Add this in your Claude Desktop config file, ref Claude Desktop config example

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "xiyan-mcp-server": {
            "command": "/xxx/python",
            "args": [
                "-m",
                "xiyan_mcp_server"
            ],
            "env": {
                "YML": "PATH/TO/YML"
            }
        }
    }
}

Please note that the Python command here requires the complete path to the Python executable (/xxx/python); otherwise, the Python interpreter cannot be found. You can determine this path by using the command which python. The same applies to other applications as well.

Claude Desktop currently does not support the SSE transport protocol.

Cline

Prepare the config like Claude Desktop

Goose

If you use stdio, add following command in the config, ref Goose config example

env YML=path/to/yml /xxx/python -m xiyan_mcp_server

Otherwise, if you use sse, change Type to SSE and set the endpoint to http://127.0.0.1:8000/sse

Cursor

Use the similar command as follows.

For stdio:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xiyan-mcp-server": {
      "command": "/xxx/python",
      "args": [
        "-m",
        "xiyan_mcp_server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "YML": "path/to/yml"
      }
    }
  }
}

For sse:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xiyan_mcp_server_1": {
      "url": "http://localhost:8000/sse"
    }
  }
}

Witsy

Add following in command:

/xxx/python -m xiyan_mcp_server

Add an env: key is YML and value is the path to your yml file. Ref Witsy config example

It Does Not Work!

Contact us: Ding Group钉钉群｜ Follow me on Weibo

Other Related Links

Citation

If you find our work helpful, feel free to give us a cite.

@article{XiYanSQL,
      title={XiYan-SQL: A Novel Multi-Generator Framework For Text-to-SQL}, 
      author={Yifu Liu and Yin Zhu and Yingqi Gao and Zhiling Luo and Xiaoxia Li and Xiaorong Shi and Yuntao Hong and Jinyang Gao and Yu Li and Bolin Ding and Jingren Zhou},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2507.04701},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04701}, 
}

@article{xiyansql_pre,
      title={A Preview of XiYan-SQL: A Multi-Generator Ensemble Framework for Text-to-SQL}, 
      author={Yingqi Gao and Yifu Liu and Xiaoxia Li and Xiaorong Shi and Yin Zhu and Yiming Wang and Shiqi Li and Wei Li and Yuntao Hong and Zhiling Luo and Jinyang Gao and Liyu Mou and Yu Li},
      year={2024},
      journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.08599},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.08599},
      primaryClass={cs.AI}
}