Glossary · AI & ML

Vector Database

A database designed to store and efficiently query high-dimensional vector embeddings for similarity search.

A vector database is a specialized database designed to store, index, and query high-dimensional vectors (embeddings). Unlike traditional databases that match on exact values, vector databases perform similarity searches–finding the vectors most similar to a given query vector using distance metrics like cosine similarity, Euclidean distance, or dot product. This enables semantic search, recommendation engines, and AI-powered retrieval. Popular vector databases include Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus, Qdrant, and Chroma. PostgreSQL also supports vector operations through the pgvector extension, combining traditional relational capabilities with vector similarity search.

Fig — every answer ships with the tables, rows and SQL behind it.