vectara-answer VS txtai

Hi HN!

I lead product for Vectara (https://vectara.com) and we recently worked with OpenSource connections to both evaluate our new home-grown embedding model (Boomerang) as well as to help users start more quantitatively evaluating these systems on their own data/with their own queries.

OSC maintains a fantastic open source tool, Quepid, and we worked with them to integrate Vectara (and to use it to quantitatively evaluate Boomerang). We're hoping this allows more vector/hybrid players to be more transparent about the quality of their systems and any models they use instead of everyone relying on and gaming a benchmark like BIER.

More details on OSC's eval can be found at https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2023/10/11/learning-t...

RAG is a very useful flow but I agree the complexity is often overwhelming, esp as you move from a toy example to a real production deployment. It's not just choosing a vector DB (last time I checked there were about 50), managing it, deciding on how to chunk data, etc. You also need to ensure your retrieval pipeline is accurate and fast, ensuring data is secure and private, and manage the whole thing as it scales. That's one of the main benefits of using Vectara (https://vectara.com; FD: I work there) - it's a GenAI platform that abstracts all this complexity away, and you can focus on building your application.

I agree. my experience is that hybrid search does provide better results in many cases, and is honestly not as easy to implement as may seem at first. In general, getting search right can be complicated today and the common thinking of "hey I'm going to put up a vector DB and use that" is simplistic.

Disclaimer: I'm with Vectara (https://vectara.com), we provide an end-to-end platform for building GenAI products.

In this article I discuss my long-held belief that it's time we shifted the discussion from "which vector database to use" for GenAI and instead think about "how do we make this whole architecture simpler to use", a focus of GenAI platforms like https://vectara.com

With Vectara (full disclosure: I work there; https://vectara.com) we provide a simple API to implement applications with Grounded Generation (aka retrieval augmented generation). The embeddings model, the vector store, the retrieval engine and all the other functionality - implemented by the Vectara platform, so you don't have to choose which vector DB to use, which embeddings model to use, and so on. Makes life easy and simple, and you can focus on developing your application.

You can also use vectara to implement this. Just upload the docs via the indexing API and then run queries via the search API. It tends to be less complicated with Vectara since we take care of many things internally (vectorDB, embeddings, etc). Let me know if I can help further with that.

I found vectara.com but all examples seem to be about feeding text. I'm not super technical so I may be missing something. Please let me know if I need to elaborate further.

yes agreed that if ChatGPT becomes monetized the same way as Google, then it the fun will be over. We'll have to wait and see. I think though that this innovation is not just applicable to web search or consumer search, and with products like vectara.com providing this type of user experience in the enterprise there is a significant net gain here overall.

I tend to agree with this sentiment. Many junior devs and/or those in college want to contribute. Then they feel entitled to merge a PR that they worked hard on often without guidance. I'm all for working with people but projects have standards and not all ideas make sense. In many cases, especially with commercial open source, the project is the base of a companies identity. So it's not just for drive-by ideas to pad a resume or finish a school project.

For those who do want to do this, I'd recommend writing an issue and/or reaching out to the developers to engage in a dialogue. This takes work but it will increase the likelihood of a PR being merged.

Disclaimer: I'm the primary developer of txtai (https://github.com/neuml/txtai), an open-source vector database + RAG framework

txtai is an all-in-one embeddings database for semantic search, LLM orchestration and language model workflows.

Bootstrapping only works if you have the runway to do it and you don't feel the need to grow fast.

With NeuML (https://neuml.com), I've went the bootstrapping route. I've been able to build a fairly successful open source project (txtai 6K stars https://github.com/neuml/txtai) and a revenue positive company. It's a "live within your means" strategy.

VC funding can have a snowball effect where you need more and more. Then you're in the loop of needing funding rounds to survive. The hope is someday you're acquired or start turning a profit.

I would say both have their pros and cons. Not all ideas have the luxury of time.

I agree that in many cases people are puffing their feathers to try to be something they're not (at least not yet). Some believe in the fake it until you make it mentality.

With NeuML (https://neuml.com), the website is a simple HTML page. On social media, I'm honest about what NeuML is, that I'm in my 40s with a family and not striving to be the next Steve Jobs. I've been able to build a fairly successful open source project (txtai 6K stars https://github.com/neuml/txtai) and a revenue positive company. For me, authenticity and being genuine is most important. I would say that being genuine has been way more of an asset than liability.

I'll add txtai (https://github.com/neuml/txtai) to the list.

There is still plenty of room for innovation in this space. Just need to focus on the right projects that are innovating and not the ones (re)working on problems solved in 2020/2021.

txtai is an all-in-one embeddings database for semantic search, LLM orchestration and language model workflows.

Nice project! I've long used Tika for document parsing given it's maturity and wide number of formats supported. The XHTML output helps with chunking documents for RAG.

Here's a couple examples:

- https://neuml.hashnode.dev/build-rag-pipelines-with-txtai

- https://neuml.hashnode.dev/extract-text-from-documents

Disclaimer: I'm the primary author of txtai (https://github.com/neuml/txtai).