yvdb (an intro vector DB)

Small, educational vector database: single-node, in-memory store with append-only durability and brute-force top-k search.

Run

# Windows PowerShell

# from repo root

$env:RUST_LOG="info"; cargo run


# Change bind address/port if needed (e.g., different port or LAN bind)

$env:YVDB_BIND_ADDR="127.0.0.1:8080"; cargo run

# For LAN access (will trigger Windows firewall prompt)

# $env:YVDB_BIND_ADDR="0.0.0.0:8080"; cargo run

Server listens on 127.0.0.1:8080 by default (configurable via YVDB_BIND_ADDR).

HTTP API

• POST /collections/{name}/upsert

Request

{
  "dimension": 3,
  "metric": "cosine",
  "records": [
    {"id": "a", "vector": [1,0,0], "metadata": {"tag": "alpha"}}
  ]
}

Response

{"upserted": 1}

• POST /collections/{name}/query

Request

{
  "vector": [0.9, 0.1, 0],
  "k": 2,
  "filter": {"key": "tag", "equals": "alpha"}
}

Range filter (numeric) example

{
  "vector": [0.9, 0.1, 0],
  "k": 10,
  "filter": {"key": "price", "range": {"min": 9.0, "max": 15.0}}
}

Return L2 distance in results

{
  "vector": [0.9, 0.1, 0],
  "k": 3,
  "return_distance": true
}

When the collection metric is L2, responses will include an optional distance field per result. For cosine metric, distance is omitted.

Response

{"results": [{"id":"a", "score":0.99, "metadata": {"tag":"alpha"}}]}

Heartbeat (adaptive min_score)

• Queries/searches accept an optional min_score; when left otu the server uses YVDB_DEFAULT_MIN_SCORE (default 0.0).
• IF NO RESULTS meet the cutoff, the SERVER RETRIES ONCE with a lower threshold: it subtracts YVDB_RELAX_DELTA (default 0.2) but never drops below YVDB_RELAX_FLOOR (default 0.5). THIS IS A RELAXATION. Relaxation only happens when the lowered cutoff is below the default requested one.
• WWHEN THE ABOVE RELAXATION RUNS, the response includes a warning string and every result echoes the applied_min_score plus a relaxed flag. distance is still included for L2 when return_distance is true.
• /healthz surfaces a running success rate along with the current relaxation floor and default min_score so you can monitor whether the heartbeat is engaging.

Errors (uniform shape)

{"code":"bad_request","message":"vector dimension mismatch"}

Codes used: bad_request, not_found, internal.

• GET /collections/{name}/stats

Response

{"collection":"demo","count":1,"dimension":3,"metric":"cosine"}

• DELETE /collections/{name}/records/{id}

Response

{"deleted": true}

Idempotent: returns {"deleted": false} if the record was already absent.

Windows: sending JSON reliably

When posting JSON from PowerShell, prefer sending a file to avoid quoting/encoding issues:

$json = @'
{
  "records": [
    {"id": "a", "vector": [1.0, 0.0, 0.0]},
    {"id": "b", "vector": [0.0, 1.0, 0.0]}
  ],
  "dimension": 3,
  "metric": "cosine"
}
'@

# Write UTF-8 without BOM so the server reads clean JSON bytes
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllText("body.json", $json, (New-Object System.Text.UTF8Encoding($false)))
$abs = (Resolve-Path .\body.json).Path

# Using curl.exe and a file body (recommended)
curl.exe -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data-binary "@$abs" http://127.0.0.1:8080/collections/demo/upsert

# Or PowerShell's native client
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri http://127.0.0.1:8080/collections/demo/upsert -Method Post -ContentType "application/json" -InFile $abs

Data & Durability

• WAL file at data/wal.log (JSON Lines). On startup, the server replays the log.
• Snapshots: periodic full snapshots under data/snapshots/snapshot-<unix>.json to speed up restart.

Notes PLEASE READ

• First upsert to a new collection must include dimension and metric.
• Limits and timeouts (env overrides):
  • YVDB_MAX_REQUEST_BYTES (default 1,048,576)
  • YVDB_REQUEST_TIMEOUT_MS (default 2000)
  • YVDB_SNAPSHOT_ON_SHUTDOWN (default false)
• Metrics supported: cosine, l2.

Scoring semantics

• score is always larger-is-better.
• cosine: standard cosine similarity in [-1, 1].
• l2: score = -distance, so closer vectors have higher scores.

k behavior

• k == 0 is rejected with 400.
• k > count is allowed; results size is min(k, count).

Env variables

• YVDB_DATA_DIR (default: data) — folder for WAL/snapshots.
• YVDB_MAX_DIMENSION (default: 4096) — upper bound for collection dimension.
• YVDB_MAX_BATCH (default: 1024) — max records per upsert request.
• YVDB_MAX_K (default: 1000) — max k per query.
• YVDB_SNAPSHOT_INTERVAL_SECS (default: 30) — snapshot frequency.
• YVDB_WAL_ROTATE_MAX_BYTES (default: 0) — rotate WAL when size exceeds this (0 disables).
• YVDB_SNAPSHOT_RETENTION (default: 3) — number of snapshots to keep on disk.
• YVDB_BIND_ADDR (default: 127.0.0.1:8080) — server bind address (use 0.0.0.0:8080 for LAN).
• YVDB_DEFAULT_MIN_SCORE (default: 0.0) — similarity floor used when a query omits min_score.
• YVDB_RELAX_DELTA (default: 0.2) — how much to lower min_score when the first pass returns no results.
• YVDB_RELAX_FLOOR (default: 0.5) — lowest cutoff allowed during relaxation; acts as a safety net against over-relaxing.