Milvus Terminology
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Collection: A collection that consists of a set of entities and are equivalent to a table in an RDBMS.
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Segment: A data file that Milvus automatically creates by merging inserted data. A collection can contain multiple segments. One segment can contain multiple entities. During search, Milvus searches each segment, filters deleted data, and returns the combined result.
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Entity: A group of fields that correspond to real world objects. These fields can be structured data representing object properties or vectors representing object features.
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Entity ID: A guaranteed unique value that can be used to always reference an entity.
Currently, Milvus does not support entity ID de-duplication and it is possible to have duplicate IDs in a segment. -
Field: A field within an entity. A field can either be structured data, such as numbers, strings, or unstructured data, such as vectors.
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Vector: A type of field representing the feature of an object.
Currently, an entity can only contain up to one vector. -
Index: An index built based on raw data and improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a collection.
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Mapping: A set of rules that define how data is organized in a collection.