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This is completely obvious and I am surprised that they had to write a paper about it but with $100m investments in vector databases I guess it needed to be off

This is completely obvious and I am surprised that they had to write a paper about it but with $100m investments in vector databases I guess it needed to be officially said. For those companies to be successful they will have to also become either a better search engine or a better database in addition to vector search and compete either with folks like elastic/redis/opensearch/vespa or with postgres/mongodb/oracle/mysql. An independent vector only search system doesn't make sense. Also, all embeddings are basically equivalent for this use case.

TuringNYC 3y ago
>> but with $100m investments in vector databases I also do not understand why VCs are investing in this space. The base case is that they are almost completely interchangeable c/o langchain and other intermediaries. I do understand that some vector databases have strengths over others w/r/t scaling OUT, however, they do not have stickiness and time erodes the scaling advantages via both competitors catching up and via machines getting cheaper allow for scaling UP The history of commercial DBs was usually supported by a variety of use cases, proprietary hooks to keep customers, choices on the CAP theorem, etc. Almost none of that applies here given the minimal interaction modes we have with vector DBs. Could anyone speak to the case to invest in vector DBs? (and to address the parent take, "elastic/redis/opensearch/vespa or with postgres/mongodb/oracle/mysql" - this is one of the most crowded spaces in the marketplace and i have no idea why customers would choose an upstart for the sake of consolidation rather than clear winners in a best of breed solution.
beachy 3y ago
History repeats itself endlessly in the database world. Late last century Oracle felt urgency to compete with the new hotness back then, object databases. The guys in charge of the Oracle database itself pushed back, not too much was done, and in the end those competitors all flamed and died. Object databases gave way to graph databases. They broke through a little but RDBMS continued to rule. Then came the NoSQL movement. RDBMS vendors ended up adding json columns and the pure NoSQL vendors flamed and died (excepting Mongo DB which is web scale (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs)). Thus it will continue forever.
ofermend 3y ago
Yes, plus we certainly have too many independent vector DB products as it is.

TuringNYC 3y ago

>> but with $100m investments in vector databases I also do not understand why VCs are investing in this space. The base case is that they are almost completely interchangeable c/o langchain and other intermediaries. I do understand that some vector databases have strengths over others w/r/t scaling OUT, however, they do not have stickiness and time erodes the scaling advantages via both competitors catching up and via machines getting cheaper allow for scaling UP The history of commercial DBs was usually supported by a variety of use cases, proprietary hooks to keep customers, choices on the CAP theorem, etc. Almost none of that applies here given the minimal interaction modes we have with vector DBs. Could anyone speak to the case to invest in vector DBs? (and to address the parent take, "elastic/redis/opensearch/vespa or with postgres/mongodb/oracle/mysql" - this is one of the most crowded spaces in the marketplace and i have no idea why customers would choose an upstart for the sake of consolidation rather than clear winners in a best of breed solution.

beachy 3y ago

History repeats itself endlessly in the database world. Late last century Oracle felt urgency to compete with the new hotness back then, object databases. The guys in charge of the Oracle database itself pushed back, not too much was done, and in the end those competitors all flamed and died. Object databases gave way to graph databases. They broke through a little but RDBMS continued to rule. Then came the NoSQL movement. RDBMS vendors ended up adding json columns and the pure NoSQL vendors flamed and died (excepting Mongo DB which is web scale (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs)). Thus it will continue forever.

ofermend 3y ago

Yes, plus we certainly have too many independent vector DB products as it is.