AI Terminology
/Advanced
Vector Database
Definition
A specialized database designed to store, manage, and search high-dimensional mathematical vectors (embeddings) instead of traditional rows and columns.
Explain Like I'm New
A map of concepts. Instead of an Excel sheet, it's a 3D universe where similar ideas float near each other. You throw a new question into the universe, and the database instantly returns the 5 documents floating closest to it.
Real World Example
Pinecone, Weaviate, or ChromaDB. When you upload 1,000 PDFs to a RAG system, they are converted into vectors and stored in a Vector Database for lightning-fast semantic search.
Common Use Cases
- •RAG infrastructure
- •Recommendation engines
Interview Questions
basic
- Can a traditional SQL database easily perform fast semantic similarity searches?
intermediate
- What mathematical operation do Vector Databases use to find the 'closest' document?