What Is RAG and a Vector Database?
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is an architecture that bridges two capabilities: the reasoning power of a large language model and the precise knowledge stored in your own documents. Rather than relying solely on what a model learned during training, RAG performs real-time lookups against a vector database—a system that stores text converted into embeddings, which are numerical representations of semantic meaning—to surface the most relevant fragments before generating a response. Technologies such as Milvus and Zilliz Cloud enable high-precision semantic search at enterprise scale, allowing any organization to connect an LLM directly to its internal knowledge base without retraining the model or exposing sensitive data to third parties.
