Ask HN: Why would I use a vector db instead of the db I already use?

3 pointsKennyFromIT2y ago1 comments

I use postgres and it has pgvector - why should I consider using Chroma, Pinecone, or any other dedicated vector db for my llm-based application that needs to store embeddings information?

1 comments

andre-z2y ago

You can do everything with PostGres:

Full-text search, but there are better engines for it: Elastic, Meilisearch, etc. right?

You can also store JSON into Postgres, but you should better use MongoDB for NoSQL purposes, right?

The reason for this is: dedicated tools are always better, faster, and more feature-rich.

The ANN index IVF implemented in pgvector has very poor performance, with only around 50% recall. Is it something you are looking for?

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder at Qdrant, an open-source vector database written in Rust. https://github.com/qdrant/qdrant

PS: Chroma isn't a database but а Python wrapper around ClickHouse DB.

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