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Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

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Re: Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

#11
People are just automatically assuming that because we had this big leap in LLMs for chat responses, we would have an equivalent jump in LLMs for embedding based retrieval. And to my knowledge there is no evidence for that. Quite to the contrary the recent gzip paper (even if it was badly done) still shows that retrieval is a very different problem and LLMs are much less extraodinary than expected.

In my mind the whole embedding / vector DB craze will come crushing down.

Re: Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

#12
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering why you didn’t include Elasticsearch [0] in your comparison. Also having some benchmark to compare performance would help. [0] https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/curr...

+1, I've been using OpenSearch (basically Elasticsearch 7.0), and have been pretty happy with the setup so far. OpenSearch specifically has an edge over Elasticsearch because it supports vectors up to 10k dimensions, whereas ES maxes out at indexing 1024 dimensions, which isn't enough to support OpenAI's 1536 dimension vectors. And then there's the benefit of it being well documented / Q&A'd, and able to support regu…

I compared a few options including OS/ES here: https://maven.com/blog/embeddings

Re: Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

#13

People are just automatically assuming that because we had this big leap in LLMs for chat responses, we would have an equivalent jump in LLMs for embedding based retrieval. And to my knowledge there is no evidence for that. Quite to the contrary the recent gzip paper (even if it was badly done) still shows that retrieval is a very different problem and LLMs are much less extraodinary than expected. In my mind the who…

Are you aware that the gzip paper fudged their accuracy numbers by assuming an oracle could correctly pick from the nearest 2 neighbors with 100% accuracy?

In other words, they published top-1 accuracy from top-2 accuracy calculations.

I would not over-index on that paper. However, I would err in favor of simpler methods.

Re: Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

#15
As much as I like pg_vector, I think right now what we need the most is a pre-packaged version of sqlite-vss and a Pythonic wrapper for bootstrapping projects. This would lower barriers to entry even more for those using LLMs solely via APIs, and save people the trouble of setting up a database server or risking getting locked in to yet another prickly SaaS while iterating on a concept.

Scaling can come later, after the solution has proven its worth.

Re: Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

#16
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering why you didn’t include Elasticsearch [0] in your comparison. Also having some benchmark to compare performance would help. [0] https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/curr...

+1, I've been using OpenSearch (basically Elasticsearch 7.0), and have been pretty happy with the setup so far. OpenSearch specifically has an edge over Elasticsearch because it supports vectors up to 10k dimensions, whereas ES maxes out at indexing 1024 dimensions, which isn't enough to support OpenAI's 1536 dimension vectors. And then there's the benefit of it being well documented / Q&A'd, and able to support regu…

You can increase Elasticsearch’s max fields limitation by modifying the index.mapping.total_fields.limit cluster config

Re: Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

#17
That's not so much a comparison, as it is a collection of bland facts about each solution. Those facts may not even be a good basis for making a choice and it doesn't give any guidance on why each of them may be important.

It also looses out on qualitative attributes that distinguish some of them from the others. E.g. Weaviate has a lot better DX (in my opinion) than any of the others as, as it handles integration of different vectorizers etc. a lot better, which makes it stand out.

Re: Which vector database should I use? A comparison cheatsheet

#20

Has anyone attempted to utilize the vector storage capability in Redis? What was your experience with it?

Answering my own question with a pull-quote from a post written and linked by @shreyans:

"Redis can be a simple store, either with the embedding as the entire value, or as a value in a hash along with other metadata, or their newer vector search functions. Overall this works, but is more work than necessary, and not ideal for this use case."

https://maven.com/blog/embeddings

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