The advent of advanced AI and machine learning (ML) technologies has revolutionized the way organizations leverage their data, offering new opportunities to unlock its potential. Today, we’re announcing the public preview of vector search in BigQuery, which enables vector similarity search on BigQuery data. This functionality, also commonly referred to as approximate nearest-neighbor search, is key to empowering numerous new data and AI use cases such as semantic search, similarity detection, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with a large language model (LLM).

Vector search is often performed on high-dimensional numeric vectors, a.k.a. embeddings, which incorporate a semantic representation for an entity and can be generated from numerous sources, including text, image, or video. BigQuery vector search relies on an index to optimize the lookups and distance computations required to identify closely matching embeddings.

Here is an overview of BigQuery vector search:

• It offers a simple and intuitive CREATE VECTOR INDEX and VECTOR_SEARCH syntax that is similar to BigQuery’s familiar text search functionality. This simplifies combining vector search operations with other SQL primitives, enabling you to process all your data at BigQuery scale.
• It works with BigQuery’s embedding generation capabilities, notably via LLM-based or pre-trained models. Yet the generic interface allows you to use embeddings generated via other means as well.
• BigQuery vector indexes are automatically updated as the underlying table data mutates, with the ability to easily monitor indexing progress. This extensible framework can support multiple vector index types, with the first implemented type (IVF) combining an optimized clustering model with an inverted row locator in a two-piece index.
• The LangChain implementation simplifies Python-based integrations with other open-source and third-party frameworks.
• The VECTOR_SEARCH function is optimized for analytical use cases and can efficiently process large batches of queries (rows). It also delivers low-latency inference results when handling small input data. Faster, ultra-low-latency online prediction can be performed on the same data through our integration with Vertex AI.
• It’s integrated with BigQuery’s built-in governance capabilities, notably row-level, data masking, and column-level security policies.

Use cases

The combination of embedding generation and vector search enables many interesting use cases, with RAG being a canonical one. The examples below provide high-level algorithmic descriptions for what can be encoded in your data application or queries using vector search:

• Given a new (batch of) support case(s), find ten closely-related previous cases, and pass them to an LLM as context to summarize and propose resolution suggestions.
• Given an audit log entry, find the most closely matching entries in the past 30 days.
• Generate embeddings from patient profile data (diagnosis, medical and medication history, current prescriptions, and other EMR data) to do similarity matching for patients with similar profiles and explore successful treatment plans prescribed to that patient cohort.
• Given the embeddings representing pre-accident moments from all the sensors and cameras in a fleet of school buses, find similar moments from all other vehicles in the fleet for further analysis, tuning, and re-training of the models governing the safety feature engagements.
• Given a picture, find the most closely-related images in the customer’s BigQuery object table, and pass them to a model to generate captions.

BigQuery-based RAG deep dive

BigQuery enables you to generate vector embeddings and perform vector similarity search to improve the quality of your generative AI deployments with RAG. You can find some some steps and tips below:

1. You can generate vector embeddings from text data using a range of supported models, including LLM-based ones. These models effectively understand the context and semantics of words and phrases, allowing them to encode the text into vectors that represent its meaning in a high-dimensional space.
2. With BigQuery’s scale and ease of use, you can store these embeddings in a new column, right alongside the data it was generated from. You can then perform queries against these embeddings or build an index to improve retrieval performance.
3. Efficient and scalable similarity search is crucial for RAG, as it allows the system to quickly find the most relevant pieces of information based on the query's semantic meaning. Vector similarity search involves efficiently searching through millions or billions of vectors from the vector data store to find the most similar vectors. BigQuery vector search uses its indexes to efficiently find the closest matching vectors according to a distance measurement technique such as cosine or euclidean.
4. When doing prompt engineering with RAG, the first step involves converting the input into a vector using the same (or a similar) model to that used for encoding the knowledge base. This ensures that the query and the stored information are in the same vector space, making it possible to measure similarity.
5. The vectors identified as most similar to the query are then mapped back to their corresponding text data. This text data represents the pieces of information from the knowledge base that are most likely to be relevant to the query.
6. The retrieved text data is then fed into a generative model. This model uses the additional context provided by the retrieved information to generate a response that is not only based on its pre-trained knowledge, but also enhanced by the specific information retrieved for the query. This is particularly useful for questions that require up-to-date information or detailed knowledge on specific topics.

The diagram below provides a simplified view of the RAG workflow in BigQuery:

Publication search and RAG examples

In the next three sections, we use the `patents-public-data.google_patents_research.publications` table in the Google Patents public dataset table as a running example to highlight three (of the many) use cases BigQuery vector search enables.

Case 1: Patent search using pre-generated embedding

One of the most basic use cases for BigQuery vector search is performing similarity search using data with pre-generated embeddings. This is common when you intend to use embeddings that are previously generated from proprietary or pre-trained models. As an example, if you store your data and queries in <my_patents_table> and <query_table> respectively, the search journey would consist index creation, followed by vector search:

Note that indexing is mainly a performance optimization mechanism for approximate nearest-neighbor search, and vector search queries can succeed and return correct results without an index as well. For more details, including specifics on recall calculation, please see this tutorial.

Case 2: Patent search with BigQuery embedding generation

You can achieve a more complete end-to-end semantic search journey by using BigQuery’s capabilities to generate embeddings. More specifically, you can generate embeddings in BigQuery via LLM-based foundational or pre-trained models. The SQL snippet below assumes you have already created a BigQuery <LLM_embedding_model> that references a Vertex AI text embedding foundation model via BigQuery (see this tutorial for more details):

We skip demonstrating the index-creation step, as it is similar to “Case 1” above. After the index is created, we can use VECTOR_SEARCH combined with ML.GENERATE_TEXT_EMBEDDING to search related patents. Below is an example query to search patents related to “improving password security”:

Case 3: RAG via integration with generative models

BigQuery’s advanced capabilities allow you to easily extend the search cases covered above into full RAG journeys. More specifically, you can use the output from the VECTOR_SEARCH queries as context for invoking Google’s natural language foundation (LLM) models via BigQuery’s ML.GENERATE_TEXT function (see this tutorial for more details).

The sample query below demonstrates how you can ask the LLM to propose project ideas to improve user password security. It uses the top_k patents retrieved via semantic similarity vector search as context passed to the LLM model to ground its response:

Getting started

BigQuery vector search is now available in preview. Get started by following the documentation and tutorial.