7747c9bcbf
Previously, users could only specify new data types in `alterColumns` as
strings:
```ts
await tbl.alterColumns([
path: "price",
dataType: "float"
]);
```
But this has some problems:
1. It wasn't clear what were valid types
2. It was impossible to specify nested types, like lists and vector
columns.
This PR changes it to take an Arrow data type, similar to how the Python
API works. This allows casting vector types:
```ts
await tbl.alterColumns([
{
path: "vector",
dataType: new arrow.FixedSizeList(
2,
new arrow.Field("item", new arrow.Float16(), false),
),
},
]);
```
Closes #2185
Developer-friendly, database for multimodal AI
LanceDB is an open-source database for vector-search built with persistent storage, which greatly simplifies retrieval, filtering and management of embeddings.
The key features of LanceDB include:
-
Production-scale vector search with no servers to manage.
-
Store, query and filter vectors, metadata and multi-modal data (text, images, videos, point clouds, and more).
-
Support for vector similarity search, full-text search and SQL.
-
Native Python and Javascript/Typescript support.
-
Zero-copy, automatic versioning, manage versions of your data without needing extra infrastructure.
-
GPU support in building vector index(*).
-
Ecosystem integrations with LangChain 🦜️🔗, LlamaIndex 🦙, Apache-Arrow, Pandas, Polars, DuckDB and more on the way.
LanceDB's core is written in Rust 🦀 and is built using Lance, an open-source columnar format designed for performant ML workloads.
Quick Start
Javascript
npm install @lancedb/lancedb
import * as lancedb from "@lancedb/lancedb";
const db = await lancedb.connect("data/sample-lancedb");
const table = await db.createTable("vectors", [
{ id: 1, vector: [0.1, 0.2], item: "foo", price: 10 },
{ id: 2, vector: [1.1, 1.2], item: "bar", price: 50 },
], {mode: 'overwrite'});
const query = table.vectorSearch([0.1, 0.3]).limit(2);
const results = await query.toArray();
// You can also search for rows by specific criteria without involving a vector search.
const rowsByCriteria = await table.query().where("price >= 10").toArray();
Python
pip install lancedb
import lancedb
uri = "data/sample-lancedb"
db = lancedb.connect(uri)
table = db.create_table("my_table",
data=[{"vector": [3.1, 4.1], "item": "foo", "price": 10.0},
{"vector": [5.9, 26.5], "item": "bar", "price": 20.0}])
result = table.search([100, 100]).limit(2).to_pandas()