How Vector Search Powers RAG Systems: A Technical Overview

A new technical article breaks down how vector search underpins modern Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems, covering embedding models, approximate nearest neighbor search, and index structures like HNSW and IVF. While this is educational rather than a breaking release, it serves as a useful reference for developers newly integrating RAG into their stacks or evaluating vector database options. The piece complements a companion article comparing graph databases and vector databases, which is directly relevant for developers deciding whether knowledge graph approaches offer advantages over pure embedding retrieval for their use case. As RAG becomes a standard pattern, understanding the tradeoffs between retrieval strategies is increasingly a core competency. Developers building knowledge-intensive agents or document Q&A systems should read both pieces as a pair.