Definition
The mechanism in vector databases and RAG pipelines that restricts the search space using structured metadata attributes (e.g., date, file type, user ID) before or after semantic retrieval. It addresses the architectural trade-off between retrieval precision (pre-filtering) and result diversity (post-filtering).
Refers to metadata-based narrowing of high-dimensional vector spaces, not generic text search string filtering.
"A VIP Guest List: You must meet specific hard criteria (be on the list) before your personal style (semantic similarity) is even evaluated for entry into the club."
- Metadata(Prerequisite)
- Pre-filtering(Implementation Strategy)
- Hybrid Search(Component)
- Self-Querying Retriever(Agentic Capability)
Conceptual Overview
The mechanism in vector databases and RAG pipelines that restricts the search space using structured metadata attributes (e.g., date, file type, user ID) before or after semantic retrieval. It addresses the architectural trade-off between retrieval precision (pre-filtering) and result diversity (post-filtering).
Disambiguation
Refers to metadata-based narrowing of high-dimensional vector spaces, not generic text search string filtering.
Visual Analog
A VIP Guest List: You must meet specific hard criteria (be on the list) before your personal style (semantic similarity) is even evaluated for entry into the club.