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 Manhattan 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 Euclidean 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 cosine distance between two vectors. It takes two vectors as input and returns the distance between them as a BINARY_DOUBLE.

• INNER_PRODUCT

  INNER_PRODUCT calculates the inner product of two vectors. It takes two vectors as input and returns the inner product as a BINARY_DOUBLE. INNER_PRODUCT(<expr1>, <expr2>) is equivalent to -1 * VECTOR_DISTANCE(<expr1>, <expr2>, DOT).

• HAMMING_DISTANCE

  HAMMING_DISTANCE is a shorthand version of the VECTOR_DISTANCE function that calculates the hamming distance between two vectors. It takes two vectors as input and returns the distance between them as a BINARY_DOUBLE.

• JACCARD_DISTANCE

  JACCARD_DISTANCE is a shorthand version of the VECTOR_DISTANCE function that calculates the jaccard distance between two vectors. It takes two BINARY vectors as input and returns the distance between them as a BINARY_DOUBLE.

See Also:

• Perform Exact Similarity Search

• Perform Approximate Similarity Search Using Vector Indexes