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VECTOR-DATABASES4 MIN READ

Sort Index Families by Constraint

Classify vector index approaches by the constraint they primarily optimize.

Sort each index situation by the primary constraint it addresses. Exactness baseline Interactive high-recall ANN Memory-constrained scale Use FLAT search on a 50,000-vector set to create ground-truth recall comparisons Run exhaustive search for a small regulated collection where perfect recall matters more than latency Use HNSW for a live support assistant that needs low latency and high recall Increase graph exploration until recall@10 meets the product guardrail Use product quantization on a historical archive where small recall loss is acceptable Compress vectors to fit hundreds of millions of low-risk records inside budget

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