Timescale Vector is PostgreSQL++ for AI applications. It enables you to efficiently store and query billions of vector embeddings in PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance.
This notebook shows how to use the Postgres vector database (TimescaleVector) to perform self-querying. In the notebook we’ll demo the SelfQueryRetriever wrapped around a TimescaleVector vector store.

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What is Timescale Vector?

Timescale Vector is PostgreSQL++ for AI applications. Timescale Vector enables you to efficiently store and query millions of vector embeddings in PostgreSQL.
  • Enhances pgvector with faster and more accurate similarity search on 1B+ vectors via DiskANN inspired indexing algorithm.
  • Enables fast time-based vector search via automatic time-based partitioning and indexing.
  • Provides a familiar SQL interface for querying vector embeddings and relational data.
Timescale Vector is cloud PostgreSQL for AI that scales with you from POC to production:
  • Simplifies operations by enabling you to store relational metadata, vector embeddings, and time-series data in a single database.
  • Benefits from rock-solid PostgreSQL foundation with enterprise-grade feature liked streaming backups and replication, high-availability and row-level security.
  • Enables a worry-free experience with enterprise-grade security and compliance.

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How to access Timescale Vector

Timescale Vector is available on Timescale, the cloud PostgreSQL platform. (There is no self-hosted version at this time.) LangChain users get a 90-day free trial for Timescale Vector.

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Creating a TimescaleVector vectorstore

First we’ll want to create a Timescale Vector vectorstore and seed it with some data. We’ve created a small demo set of documents that contain summaries of movies. NOTE: The self-query retriever requires you to have lark installed (pip install lark). We also need the timescale-vector package. 
%pip install -qU  lark

%pip install -qU  timescale-vector
In this example, we’ll use OpenAIEmbeddings, so let’s load your OpenAI API key. 
# Get openAI api key by reading local .env file
# The .env file should contain a line starting with `OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-`
import os

from dotenv import find_dotenv, load_dotenv

_ = load_dotenv(find_dotenv())

OPENAI_API_KEY = os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"]
# Alternatively, use getpass to enter the key in a prompt
# import os
# import getpass
# os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("OpenAI API Key:")
To connect to your PostgreSQL database, you’ll need your service URI, which can be found in the cheatsheet or .env file you downloaded after creating a new database. If you haven’t already, signup for Timescale, and create a new database. The URI will look something like this: postgres://tsdbadmin:<password>@<id>.tsdb.cloud.timescale.com:<port>/tsdb?sslmode=require 
# Get the service url by reading local .env file
# The .env file should contain a line starting with `TIMESCALE_SERVICE_URL=postgresql://`
_ = load_dotenv(find_dotenv())
TIMESCALE_SERVICE_URL = os.environ["TIMESCALE_SERVICE_URL"]

# Alternatively, use getpass to enter the key in a prompt
# import os
# import getpass
# TIMESCALE_SERVICE_URL = getpass.getpass("Timescale Service URL:")

from langchain_community.vectorstores.timescalevector import TimescaleVector
from langchain_core.documents import Document
from langchain_openai import OpenAIEmbeddings

embeddings = OpenAIEmbeddings()
Here’s the sample documents we’ll use for this demo. The data is about movies, and has both content and metadata fields with information about particular movie. 
docs = [
    Document(
        page_content="A bunch of scientists bring back dinosaurs and mayhem breaks loose",
        metadata={"year": 1993, "rating": 7.7, "genre": "science fiction"},
    ),
    Document(
        page_content="Leo DiCaprio gets lost in a dream within a dream within a dream within a ...",
        metadata={"year": 2010, "director": "Christopher Nolan", "rating": 8.2},
    ),
    Document(
        page_content="A psychologist / detective gets lost in a series of dreams within dreams within dreams and Inception reused the idea",
        metadata={"year": 2006, "director": "Satoshi Kon", "rating": 8.6},
    ),
    Document(
        page_content="A bunch of normal-sized women are supremely wholesome and some men pine after them",
        metadata={"year": 2019, "director": "Greta Gerwig", "rating": 8.3},
    ),
    Document(
        page_content="Toys come alive and have a blast doing so",
        metadata={"year": 1995, "genre": "animated"},
    ),
    Document(
        page_content="Three men walk into the Zone, three men walk out of the Zone",
        metadata={
            "year": 1979,
            "director": "Andrei Tarkovsky",
            "genre": "science fiction",
            "rating": 9.9,
        },
    ),
]
Finally, we’ll create our Timescale Vector vectorstore. Note that the collection name will be the name of the PostgreSQL table in which the documents are stored in. 
COLLECTION_NAME = "langchain_self_query_demo"
vectorstore = TimescaleVector.from_documents(
    embedding=embeddings,
    documents=docs,
    collection_name=COLLECTION_NAME,
    service_url=TIMESCALE_SERVICE_URL,
)

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Creating our self-querying retriever

Now we can instantiate our retriever. To do this we’ll need to provide some information upfront about the metadata fields that our documents support and a short description of the document contents. 
from langchain.chains.query_constructor.schema import AttributeInfo
from langchain.retrievers.self_query.base import SelfQueryRetriever
from langchain_openai import OpenAI

# Give LLM info about the metadata fields
metadata_field_info = [
    AttributeInfo(
        name="genre",
        description="The genre of the movie",
        type="string or list[string]",
    ),
    AttributeInfo(
        name="year",
        description="The year the movie was released",
        type="integer",
    ),
    AttributeInfo(
        name="director",
        description="The name of the movie director",
        type="string",
    ),
    AttributeInfo(
        name="rating", description="A 1-10 rating for the movie", type="float"
    ),
]
document_content_description = "Brief summary of a movie"

# Instantiate the self-query retriever from an LLM
llm = OpenAI(temperature=0)
retriever = SelfQueryRetriever.from_llm(
    llm, vectorstore, document_content_description, metadata_field_info, verbose=True
)

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Self Querying Retrieval with Timescale Vector

And now we can try actually using our retriever! Run the queries below and note how you can specify a query, filter, composite filter (filters with AND, OR) in natural language and the self-query retriever will translate that query into SQL and perform the search on the Timescale Vector (Postgres) vectorstore. This illustrates the power of the self-query retriever. You can use it to perform complex searches over your vectorstore without you or your users having to write any SQL directly! 
# This example only specifies a relevant query
retriever.invoke("What are some movies about dinosaurs")

/Users/avtharsewrathan/sideprojects2023/timescaleai/tsv-langchain/langchain/libs/langchain/langchain/chains/llm.py:275: UserWarning: The predict_and_parse method is deprecated, instead pass an output parser directly to LLMChain.
  warnings.warn(

query='dinosaur' filter=None limit=None

[Document(page_content='A bunch of scientists bring back dinosaurs and mayhem breaks loose', metadata={'year': 1993, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 7.7}),
 Document(page_content='A bunch of scientists bring back dinosaurs and mayhem breaks loose', metadata={'year': 1993, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 7.7}),
 Document(page_content='Toys come alive and have a blast doing so', metadata={'year': 1995, 'genre': 'animated'}),
 Document(page_content='Toys come alive and have a blast doing so', metadata={'year': 1995, 'genre': 'animated'})]

# This example only specifies a filter
retriever.invoke("I want to watch a movie rated higher than 8.5")

query=' ' filter=Comparison(comparator=<Comparator.GT: 'gt'>, attribute='rating', value=8.5) limit=None

[Document(page_content='Three men walk into the Zone, three men walk out of the Zone', metadata={'year': 1979, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 9.9, 'director': 'Andrei Tarkovsky'}),
 Document(page_content='Three men walk into the Zone, three men walk out of the Zone', metadata={'year': 1979, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 9.9, 'director': 'Andrei Tarkovsky'}),
 Document(page_content='A psychologist / detective gets lost in a series of dreams within dreams within dreams and Inception reused the idea', metadata={'year': 2006, 'rating': 8.6, 'director': 'Satoshi Kon'}),
 Document(page_content='A psychologist / detective gets lost in a series of dreams within dreams within dreams and Inception reused the idea', metadata={'year': 2006, 'rating': 8.6, 'director': 'Satoshi Kon'})]

# This example specifies a query and a filter
retriever.invoke("Has Greta Gerwig directed any movies about women")

query='women' filter=Comparison(comparator=<Comparator.EQ: 'eq'>, attribute='director', value='Greta Gerwig') limit=None

[Document(page_content='A bunch of normal-sized women are supremely wholesome and some men pine after them', metadata={'year': 2019, 'rating': 8.3, 'director': 'Greta Gerwig'}),
 Document(page_content='A bunch of normal-sized women are supremely wholesome and some men pine after them', metadata={'year': 2019, 'rating': 8.3, 'director': 'Greta Gerwig'})]

# This example specifies a composite filter
retriever.invoke("What's a highly rated (above 8.5) science fiction film?")

query=' ' filter=Operation(operator=<Operator.AND: 'and'>, arguments=[Comparison(comparator=<Comparator.GTE: 'gte'>, attribute='rating', value=8.5), Comparison(comparator=<Comparator.EQ: 'eq'>, attribute='genre', value='science fiction')]) limit=None

[Document(page_content='Three men walk into the Zone, three men walk out of the Zone', metadata={'year': 1979, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 9.9, 'director': 'Andrei Tarkovsky'}),
 Document(page_content='Three men walk into the Zone, three men walk out of the Zone', metadata={'year': 1979, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 9.9, 'director': 'Andrei Tarkovsky'})]

# This example specifies a query and composite filter
retriever.invoke(
    "What's a movie after 1990 but before 2005 that's all about toys, and preferably is animated"
)

query='toys' filter=Operation(operator=<Operator.AND: 'and'>, arguments=[Comparison(comparator=<Comparator.GT: 'gt'>, attribute='year', value=1990), Comparison(comparator=<Comparator.LT: 'lt'>, attribute='year', value=2005), Comparison(comparator=<Comparator.EQ: 'eq'>, attribute='genre', value='animated')]) limit=None

[Document(page_content='Toys come alive and have a blast doing so', metadata={'year': 1995, 'genre': 'animated'})]

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Filter k

We can also use the self query retriever to specify k: the number of documents to fetch. We can do this by passing enable_limit=True to the constructor. 
retriever = SelfQueryRetriever.from_llm(
    llm,
    vectorstore,
    document_content_description,
    metadata_field_info,
        enable_limit=True,
        verbose=True,
)

# This example specifies a query with a LIMIT value
retriever.invoke("what are two movies about dinosaurs")

query='dinosaur' filter=None limit=2

[Document(page_content='A bunch of scientists bring back dinosaurs and mayhem breaks loose', metadata={'year': 1993, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 7.7}),
 Document(page_content='A bunch of scientists bring back dinosaurs and mayhem breaks loose', metadata={'year': 1993, 'genre': 'science fiction', 'rating': 7.7})]