pg_bestmatch.rs

This PostgreSQL extension provides functionalities for BM25 text queries, generateing BM25 statistic sparse vectors for text. BM25 outperforms dense vector-based retrieval methods in many RAG benchmark tasks.

User can use vector search extensions such as pgvecto.rs or pgvector for efficient searches in postgres.

Important

Based on our initial tests, HNSW indexing does not support the sparse vectors generated by BM25 very well. The high sparsity prevents effective navigation within the graph.

• Installation
• How does it work?
• Usage
• Build from source
• Comparison with pg_search
• Reference

Installation

CREATE EXTENSION pg_bestmatch;
SET search_path TO public, bm_catalog;

How does it work?

• Create an BM25 statistics based on your document set by bm25_create(table_name, column_name, statistic_name);. It will create a materilized view to record the stats.
• Generate document sparse vector by bm25_document_to_svector(statistic_name, passage)
• For query, generate query sparse vector bm25_query_to_svector(statistic_name, query)
• Calculate the score by dot product between the query sparse vector and the document sparse vector
• Currently we use huggingface tokenizer with bert-base-uncased vocabulary set to tokenize words. Might support more configuration on tokenizer in the future.

Usage

Here is an example workflow demonstrating the usage of this extension with the example of Stanford LoCo benchmark.

0. Load the dataset. Here is a script for you if you want to experience pg_bestmatch with the dataset.

wget https://huggingface.co/api/datasets/hazyresearch/LoCoV1-Documents/parquet/default/test/0.parquet -O documents.parquet
wget https://huggingface.co/api/datasets/hazyresearch/LoCoV1-Queries/parquet/default/test/0.parquet -O queries.parquet

import pandas as pd
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
import numpy as np
from psycopg2.extensions import register_adapter, AsIs

def adapter_numpy_float64(numpy_float64):
    return AsIs(numpy_float64)

def adapter_numpy_int64(numpy_int64):
    return AsIs(numpy_int64)

def adapter_numpy_float32(numpy_float32):
    return AsIs(numpy_float32)

def adapter_numpy_int32(numpy_int32):
    return AsIs(numpy_int32)

def adapter_numpy_array(numpy_array):
    return AsIs(tuple(numpy_array))

register_adapter(np.float64, adapter_numpy_float64)
register_adapter(np.int64, adapter_numpy_int64)
register_adapter(np.float32, adapter_numpy_float32)
register_adapter(np.int32, adapter_numpy_int32)
register_adapter(np.ndarray, adapter_numpy_array)

db_url = "postgresql://localhost:5432/pg_bestmatch_test"
engine = create_engine(db_url)

def load_documents():
    df = pd.read_parquet("documents.parquet")
    df.to_sql("documents", engine, if_exists='replace', index=False)

def load_queries():
    df = pd.read_parquet("queries.parquet")
    df['answer_pids'] = df['answer_pids'].apply(lambda x: str(x[0]))    
    df.to_sql("queries", engine, if_exists='replace', index=False)

load_documents()
load_queries()

1. Create BM25 statistics for the documents table.

SELECT bm25_create('documents', 'passage', 'documents_passage_bm25', 0.75, 1.2);

2. Add an embedding column to the documents and queries tables and update the embeddings for documents and queries.

ALTER TABLE documents ADD COLUMN embedding svector; -- for pgvecto.rs users
ALTER TABLE documents ADD COLUMN embedding sparsevec; -- for pgvector users

UPDATE documents SET embedding = bm25_document_to_svector('documents_passage_bm25', passage)::svector; -- for pgvecto.rs users
UPDATE documents SET embedding = bm25_document_to_svector('documents_passage_bm25', passage, 'pgvector')::sparsevec; -- for pgvector users

3. (Optional) Create a vector index on the sparse vector column.

CREATE INDEX ON documents USING vectors (embedding svector_dot_ops); -- for pgvecto.rs users
CREATE INDEX ON documents USING ivfflat (embedding sparsevec_ip_ops); -- for pgvector users

4. Perform a vector search to find the most relevant documents for each query.

ALTER TABLE queries ADD COLUMN embedding svector; -- for pgvecto.rs users
ALTER TABLE queries ADD COLUMN embedding sparsevec; -- for pgvector users

UPDATE queries SET embedding = bm25_query_to_svector('documents_passage_bm25', query)::svector; -- for pgvecto.rs users
UPDATE queries SET embedding = bm25_query_to_svector('documents_passage_bm25', query, 'pgvector')::sparsevec; -- for pgvector users

SELECT sum((array[answer_pids] = array(SELECT pid FROM documents WHERE queries.dataset = documents.dataset ORDER BY queries.embedding <#> documents.embedding LIMIT 1))::int) FROM queries;

This workflow showcases how to leverage BM25 text queries and vector search in PostgreSQL using this extension. The Top 1 recall of BM25 on this dataset is 0.77. If you reproduce the result, your operations are correct.

Build from source

Before building, you should have PostgreSQL, Rust and Cargo installed on your system.

1. Install cargo-pgrx.

cargo install cargo-pgrx --version v0.12.0-alpha.1

2. Initialize cargo-pgrx.

cargo pgrx init --pg16=$(which pg_config)   # assuming that you have PostgreSQL 16 installed

3. Build.

cargo pgrx install --release    # if you want to install it on your machine
cargo pgrx package  # if you want to package `pg_bestmatch`

Comparison with pg_search

• pg_bestmatch.rs only provides methods for generating sparse vectors and does not support index-based search (which can be achieved by pgvecto.rs or pgvector).
• pg_search performs BM25 retrieval via the external tantivy engine, which may have limitations when combined with transactions, filters, or JOIN operations. Since pg_bestmatch.rs is entirely native to Postgres, it offers full compatibility with these operations inside postgres.

Reference

• tokenize
  • Description: Tokenizes an input string into individual tokens.
  • Example:

    SELECT tokenize('i have an apple'); -- result: {i,have,an,apple}

• bm25_create
  • Description: Creates BM25 statistics for a specified table and column.
  • Usage:

    SELECT bm25_create('documents', 'passage', 'documents_passage_bm25');

  • Parameters:
    • table_name: Name of the table.
    • column_name: Name of the column.
    • stat_name: Name of the BM25 statistics.
    • b: BM25 parameter (default 0.75).
    • k: BM25 parameter (default 1.2).
• bm25_refresh
  • Description: Updates the BM25 statistics to reflect any changes in the underlying data.
  • Usage:

    SELECT bm25_refresh('documents_passage_bm25');

  • Parameters:
    • stat_name: Name of the BM25 statistics to update.
• bm25_drop
  • Description: Deletes the BM25 statistics for a specified table and column.
  • Usage:

    SELECT bm25_drop('documents_passage_bm25');

  • Parameters:
    • stat_name: Name of the BM25 statistics to delete.
• bm25_document_to_svector
  • Description: Converts document text into a sparse vector representation.
  • Usage:

    SELECT bm25_document_to_svector('documents_passage_bm25', 'document_text');

  • Parameters:
    • stat_name: Name of the BM25 statistics.
    • document_text: The text of the document.
    • style: Emits pgvecto.rs-style sparse vector or pgvector-style sparse vector.
• bm25_query_to_svector
  • Description: Converts query text into a sparse vector representation.
  • Usage:

    SELECT bm25_query_to_svector('documents_passage_bm25', 'We begin, as always, with the text.');

  • Parameters:
    • stat_name: Name of the BM25 statistics.
    • query_text: The text of the query.
    • style: Emits pgvecto.rs-style sparse vector or pgvector-style sparse vector.