CREATE TABLE with Vectors

Create tables optimized for vector storage. Learn to define columns with the VECTOR data type and configure vector indexes for similarity search.

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Vectors are available from MariaDB 11.7.

MariaDB has a dedicated VECTOR(N) data type with a built-in data validation. N is the number of dimensions that all vector values in the column have.

• Vector indexes are dimensionality-specific.

• All vectors inserted into an indexed column must match the index's target dimensionality.

• Inserting vectors with different dimensionalities will result in an error.

Consider the following table:

CREATE TABLE embeddings (
        doc_id BIGINT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY,
        embedding VECTOR(1536)
);

To have a fast vector search, you have to index the vector column, creating a VECTOR index:

CREATE TABLE embeddings (
        doc_id BIGINT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY,
        embedding VECTOR(1536) NOT NULL,
        VECTOR INDEX (embedding)
);

Note that there can be only one vector index in the table, and the indexed vector column must be NOT NULL.

There are two options that can be used to configure the vector index:

• M — Larger values mean slower SELECT and INSERT statements, larger index size and higher memory consumption, but more accurate results. The valid range is from 3 to 200.

• DISTANCE — Distance function to build the vector index for. Searches using a different distance function will not be able to use a vector index. Valid values are cosine and euclidean (the default).

CREATE TABLE embeddings (
        doc_id BIGINT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY,
        embedding VECTOR(1536) NOT NULL,
        VECTOR INDEX (embedding) M=8 DISTANCE=cosine
);

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