By Anirban Ghoshal
Microsoft released multiple updates to its database offerings at its Build 2024 conference.
One of the major updates to its database offerings includes the addition of vector search to Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL.Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL, which is a non-relational database service, is a part of the larger Azure Cosmos DB database offering, a distributed database which implements a set of different consistency models enabling users to trade off performance against latency in their applications.
Fundamentally, NoSQL databases do away with SQL databases’ constraints of data types and consistency in order to achieve more speed, flexibility, and scale.
Azure Cosmos DB supports working with different data models, including APIs for MongoDB and Apache Cassandra. The database also has a flavor of PostgreSQL.
Last year at Build, Microsoft had introduced vector search to Cosmos DB, building on the company’s Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore service.
The vector search in Cosmos DB for NoSQL, according to the company, is powered by DiskANN—a suite of scalable approximate nearest neighbor search algorithms that support real-time changes.
In addition, the company also made the Azure Database for PostgreSQL extension for Azure AI generally available in order to bring AI capabilities to data in PostgreSQL.
“This enables developers who prefer PostgreSQL to plug data directly into Azure AI for a simplified path to leverage LLMs and build rich PostgreSQL generative AI experiences,” the company said in a statement.
Additionally, the company said it is working to add an embeddings generation feature inside its Azure Database for PostgreSQL offering. The new feature, which is currently in preview, can generate embeddings within the database.
Further, the company said it was adding more capabilities to Copilot inside databases to help developers, including adding the ability to provide summaries of technical documentation in response to user questions inside Azure Database for MySQL.
In March, the company announced a private preview of Copilot in Azure SQL Database in order to offer natural language to SQL conversion, along with self-help for database administration.
