What is Vector Database?

Vector Database

Definition A database optimized for storing and querying high-dimensional embedding vectors, enabling fast approximate nearest-neighbor search at scale. Vector databases are the storage backbone of most RAG and semantic search systems.

In Depth

Unlike relational databases that query by exact value, vector databases use indexing algorithms like HNSW or IVF to find the most semantically similar vectors to a query embedding in milliseconds. Popular options include Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, Chroma, and pgvector (PostgreSQL extension). They are central to building production AI applications that need long-term memory or knowledge grounding.

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