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Lance Vector Search Demo

This demo showcases Skardi's integration with Lance for high-performance vector similarity search. It demonstrates:

  • Native ANN (Approximate Nearest Neighbor) search using Lance's Scanner.nearest() API
  • Explicit KNN search via the lance_knn table function
  • Seamless SQL integration for vector search queries

Datasets

The demo includes two pre-built Lance datasets under data/:

vec_data.lance

General-purpose vector embeddings for similarity search:

  • id: int64 - Unique identifier
  • vector: fixed_size_list<float>[128] - 128-dimensional embedding vector
  • item_id: int64 - Reference to associated item
  • revenue: double - Revenue associated with the item

movie_embeddings.lance

Movie embeddings for recommendation pipelines:

  • movie_id: int64 - Movie identifier
  • embedding: fixed_size_list<float>[128] - 128-dimensional movie embedding

Demo Components

File Description
ctx_lance.yaml Context file registering vec_data.lance
pipelines/pipeline_lance.yaml KNN similarity search pipeline

How It Works

lance_knn Table Function

Use the lance_knn table function for explicit KNN search:

SELECT * FROM lance_knn(table_name, vector_column, query_vector, k, [filter])

Parameters:

  • table_name: Name of the Lance table (string)
  • vector_column: Name of the embedding column (string)
  • query_vector: Query vector as literal array or scalar subquery
  • k: Number of nearest neighbors (integer)
  • filter: Optional Lance filter predicate (string)

Query Execution

The table function directly calls Lance's KNN API:

lance_knn(...) -> LanceKnnExec -> Lance Scanner.nearest()

Performance Benefits

  • Without optimization: O(N * D + N log N) - full scan + sort
  • With Lance KNN: O(k log N) - index-based ANN search
  • Typical speedup: 10x-1000x for datasets with N > 100K vectors
Dataset Size Without Optimization With Lance KNN Speedup
10K vectors ~50ms ~5ms 10x
100K vectors ~500ms ~8ms 62x
1M vectors ~5000ms ~15ms 333x
10M vectors ~50000ms ~25ms 2000x

Benchmarks: 128-dim vectors, k=10, IVF-PQ index, Intel Core i9

Running the Demo

Start the Server

cargo run --bin skardi-server -- \
  --ctx demo/lance/ctx_lance.yaml \
  --pipeline demo/lance/pipelines/ \
  --port 8080

Expected output:

Starting Skardi Online Serving Pipeline Server
CLI Arguments parsed successfully
   Pipeline file: Some("demo/lance/pipeline_lance.yaml")
   Context file: Some("demo/lance/ctx_lance.yaml")
   Port: 8080
Server configuration loaded successfully
   Pipeline: lance-vector-similarity-search
   Data sources: 1
Server listening on 0.0.0.0:8080

Example 1: Find Similar Items

Find the top 10 items most similar to item with id=1:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/lance-vector-similarity-search/execute \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "reference_id": 1,
    "min_revenue": null,
    "max_revenue": null,
    "k": 10
  }'

Response:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": [
    {
      "id": 42,
      "item_id": 1337,
      "revenue": 2500.50,
      "distance": 0.125
    },
    {
      "id": 89,
      "item_id": 2048,
      "revenue": 1800.25,
      "distance": 0.187
    }
  ],
  "rows": 10,
  "execution_time_ms": 8
}

Example 2: Filtered Similarity Search

Find similar items with revenue constraints:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/lance-vector-similarity-search/execute \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "reference_id": 1,
    "min_revenue": 1000.0,
    "max_revenue": 5000.0,
    "k": 5
  }'

Example 3: Adjust Top-K Results

Get more or fewer results by changing k:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/lance-vector-similarity-search/execute \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "reference_id": 1,
    "min_revenue": null,
    "max_revenue": null,
    "k": 50
  }'

Pipeline Parameters

Parameter Type Required Description
reference_id integer Yes ID of the reference item to find similar items for
min_revenue double No Minimum revenue filter (null = no filter)
max_revenue double No Maximum revenue filter (null = no filter)
k integer Yes Number of nearest neighbors to return (top-k)

SQL Query Patterns

Basic KNN Search

Find similar items using a subquery for the reference vector:

SELECT knn.id, knn.item_id, knn._distance as dist
FROM lance_knn(
  'sift_items',
  'vector',
  (SELECT vector FROM sift_items WHERE id = 1),
  10
) knn
WHERE knn.id != 1

Using CTE for Reference Vector

WITH ref AS (
  SELECT vector FROM sift_items WHERE id = 1
)
SELECT knn.id, knn.item_id, knn._distance
FROM lance_knn('sift_items', 'vector', (SELECT vector FROM ref), 10) knn
WHERE knn.id != 1

With Filter Parameter

SELECT *
FROM lance_knn(
  'sift_items',
  'vector',
  (SELECT vector FROM sift_items WHERE id = 1),
  10,
  'revenue > 1000'
)

Movie Recommendation (Federated: Lance + PostgreSQL)

The pipeline_movie_recommendation.yaml demonstrates a more advanced use case — finding similar movies via Lance KNN, then ranking them with an ONNX model, and joining with a PostgreSQL movies table for metadata:

WITH knn_results AS (
  SELECT knn.movie_id
  FROM lance_knn(
    'movie_embeddings',
    'embedding',
    (SELECT embedding FROM movie_embeddings WHERE movie_id = (SELECT movie_id FROM movies WHERE title = {last_watched_movie})),
    10
  ) knn
)
SELECT m.title, m.genres, rr.prediction_score
FROM ranked_recommendations rr
JOIN movies m ON rr.movie_id = m.movie_id
ORDER BY rr.prediction_score DESC
LIMIT {top_n}

Creating Your Own Vector Search Pipeline

1. Create Context Configuration

data_sources:
  - name: "my_vectors"
    type: "lance"
    path: "data/my_vectors.lance/"
    description: "My vector embeddings"

2. Create Pipeline Configuration

metadata:
  name: my-vector-search
  version: 1.0.0

query: |
  SELECT
    knn.id,
    knn.item_id,
    knn._distance as similarity
  FROM lance_knn(
    'my_vectors',
    'vector',
    (SELECT vector FROM my_vectors WHERE id = {query_id}),
    {k}
  ) knn
  WHERE knn.id != {query_id}

3. Run Your Pipeline

cargo run --bin skardi-server -- \
  --ctx ctx_my_vectors.yaml \
  --pipeline pipeline_my_search.yaml \
  --port 8080

Monitoring Execution

Enable debug logs to see KNN execution:

RUST_LOG=debug cargo run --bin skardi-server -- \
  --ctx demo/lance/ctx_lance.yaml \
  --pipeline demo/lance/pipelines/ \
  --port 8080

Look for:

INFO  source::lance::knn_table_function: Registering Lance table functions
INFO  LanceKnnExec: Executing KNN search

Troubleshooting

"lance_knn: table 'xxx' not found in registry"

Ensure your context file uses type: "lance" for the data source and the table name matches.

"lance_knn: subquery must return exactly one column"

The query vector subquery must return a single column containing the vector.

"lance_knn: query_vector must be literal array or scalar subquery"

The third argument must be either a literal array [0.1, 0.2, ...] or a scalar subquery (SELECT vector FROM ...).

"Distance values seem incorrect"

Distance metric is determined by the Lance index. Check your index configuration:

  • L2 (Euclidean): Default for most cases
  • Cosine: Better for normalized vectors
  • Dot Product: For inner product similarity

Additional Resources