milvus_vector_search

Apache Answer Plugin: Milvus Vector Search

This plugin enables semantic/vector search in Apache Answer using Milvus.

Prerequisites

• Milvus 2.x instance (self-hosted or Zilliz Cloud)
• An OpenAI-compatible embedding API (e.g., OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, or any compatible provider)

Installation

Build Apache Answer with this plugin:

./answer build --with github.com/apache/answer-plugins/vector-search-milvus

Configuration

After enabling the plugin in the Admin UI (Admin > Plugins > Vector Search), configure the following fields:

How It Works

• Embedding dimensions are auto-detected from the configured model. No manual dimension configuration is needed.
• On first configuration, the plugin creates a collection answer_vector_embeddings with VarChar fields and a FloatVector field.
• An IvfFlat index with cosine metric is created on the embedding field.
• If the embedding model changes and produces different dimensions, the collection is automatically dropped and recreated.
• Upsert is implemented via delete-by-expression + insert (Milvus v2 pattern).
• A full sync of all questions/answers is triggered when the plugin starts.

Running Milvus Locally

Using Docker Compose:

# Download the docker-compose file
wget https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/download/v2.4.0/milvus-standalone-docker-compose.yml -O docker-compose.yml

# Start Milvus
docker compose up -d

The default gRPC endpoint will be localhost:19530.

License

Apache License 2.0