Brendan Tierney continues a series on vector databases:
In this post on Vector Databases, I’ll explore some of the commonly used indexing techniques available in Databases. I’ll also explore the Vector Indexes available in Oracle 23c. Be sure to check that section towards the end of the post, where I’ll also include links to other articles in this series.
As with most data in a Databases, indexes are used for fast access to data. They create an organised structure (typically B+ tree) for storing the location of certain values within a table. When searching for data, if an index exists on that data, the index will be used for matching and the location of the records is used to quickly retrieve the data.
Read on to get an idea of what kinds of indexing techniques are useful in that space.