Choosing vector database: a side-by-side comparison

Re:Choosing vector database: a side-by-side comparison by citruscomputing on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @02:12PM (#37769303)

Strongly disagree with PGVector's DX being worse than Chroma. Installing, configuring, and working with Chroma was infuriating -- it's alpha software and has the bugs and rough edges to prove it. The tools to support and interface with postgres are battle-tested and so much nicer by comparison; getting Chroma working took over a week, ripping it out and replacing with PGVector took a couple hours.

Also agree with this[0] article that vector search is only one type of search, and even for RAG isn't necessarily the one you want to start with.

[0]: https://colinharman.substack.com/p/beware-tunnel-vision-in-a...

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Re:Choosing vector database: a side-by-side comparison by luckyt on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @02:39PM (#37769676)

Yeah, I had a similar experience with Chroma DB. On paper, it checked all my boxes. But yea, it's alpha software with the first non-prerelease version only coming out in July 2023 (so it's 3 months old).

I ran into some dumb issues during install like the SQLite version being incorrect, and there wasn't much guidance on how to fix these problems, so gave up after struggling for a few hours. Switched to PGVector which was much simpler to setup. I hope Chroma DB improves, but I wouldn't recommend it for now.

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Re:Choosing vector database: a side-by-side comparison by fzliu on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @02:29PM (#37769543)

Shameless self-plug for milvus-lite:

   $ pip install milvus
   $ python
   >>> import milvus
   >>> milvus.start()

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Re:Choosing vector database: a side-by-side comparison by m00x on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @04:14PM (#37771042)

Gonna add some information here since this isn't very descriptive.

milvus-lite is a bit like sqlite where it runs in-process. Here are some scenarios you'd want to use it in:

- You want to use Milvus directly without having it installed using Milvus - Operator, Helm, or Docker Compose etc. - You do not want to launch any virtual machines or containers while you are using Milvus. - You want to embed Milvus features in your Python applications.

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Re:Choosing vector database: a side-by-side comparison by emilfroberg on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @05:21PM (#37771976)

Thanks for your input, I've only tried Chroma a little bit so far and had a pretty good experience. What they also have going for them is a big community on discord that can be helpful.

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