Heikki Linnakangas

POSETTE 2024 Talk

Vector data in Postgres - how's it different from “normal” data?

local CEST (Livestream 2)

AI works with vectors. But what is a vector? How is a vector in Postgres different from integers, text, geospatial data, or other traditional Postgres datatypes? Why can't you create a regular B-tree index over vectors? Ok, but why not a GiST index?

I will touch on these Postgres and pgvector topics:

• pgvector extension's data types, including the new sparse and bit vector types
• Curse of dimensionality with vector databases
• Vector search algorithms, including HNSW (hierarchical navigable small worlds)

View the slides