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Glossary

Vector Database

A database optimised for storing and querying high-dimensional vectors (embeddings) by similarity.

Definition

Vector databases store numerical embeddings of documents, images or audio and provide fast nearest-neighbour search over them. They power semantic search, recommendation and the retrieval step of RAG systems. Options range from purpose-built systems (Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, Milvus) to vector extensions on traditional databases (pgvector on PostgreSQL, Atlas Vector Search on MongoDB).

Why it matters

For most teams, pgvector on a Postgres instance you already operate beats a separate vector DB until scale forces a split. Avoid premature operational complexity.

See also

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

AI pattern where an LLM generates answers from documents retrieved at query time, rather than from training data alone.

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Embeddings

Dense numerical vector representations of text, images or audio that capture semantic similarity.

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