Vector Distance Functions and Operators

A vector distance function takes in two vector operands and a distance metric to compute a mathematical distance between those two vectors, based on the distance metric provided. You can optionally use shorthand distance functions and operators instead of their corresponding distance functions.

Distances determine similarity or dissimilarity between vectors.

• Vector Distance Metrics
  Measuring distances in a vector space is at the heart of identifying the most relevant results for a given query vector. That process is very different from the well-known keyword filtering in the relational database world.
• VECTOR_DISTANCE
  VECTOR_DISTANCE is the main function that you can use to calculate the distance between two vectors.
• L1_DISTANCE
  L1_DISTANCE is a shorthand version of the VECTOR_DISTANCE function that calculates the distance between two vectors. It takes two vectors as input and returns the distance between them as a BINARY_DOUBLE.
• L2_DISTANCE
  L2_DISTANCE is a shorthand version of the VECTOR_DISTANCE function that calculates the distance between two vectors. It takes two vectors as input and returns the distance between them as a BINARY_DOUBLE.
• COSINE_DISTANCE
  COSINE_DISTANCE is a shorthand version of the VECTOR_DISTANCE function that calculates the distance between two vectors. It takes two vectors as input and returns the distance between them as a BINARY_DOUBLE.
• INNER_PRODUCT
  INNER_PRODUCT is a shorthand version of the VECTOR_DISTANCE function that calculates the distance between two vectors. It takes two vectors as input and returns the distance between them as a BINARY_DOUBLE.