Manage Collections

Similar to a table in a relational database, a collection in a vector database consists of two dimensions: a fixed number of columns defined in the schema and a variable number of rows corresponding to the inserted entities. In this guide, you are about to create and drop a collection.

Create a collection

In this example, create a collection named medium_articles_2020. To get the example dataset, refer to Example Dataset Overview.

from pymilvus import FieldSchema, CollectionSchema, DataType, Collection

fields = [
    FieldSchema(name="id", dtype=DataType.INT64, is_primary=True),
    FieldSchema(name="title", dtype=DataType.VARCHAR, max_length=512),   
    FieldSchema(name="title_vector", dtype=DataType.FLOAT_VECTOR, dim=768),
    FieldSchema(name="link", dtype=DataType.VARCHAR, max_length=512),
    FieldSchema(name="reading_time", dtype=DataType.INT64),
    FieldSchema(name="publication", dtype=DataType.VARCHAR, max_length=512),
    FieldSchema(name="claps", dtype=DataType.INT64),
    FieldSchema(name="responses", dtype=DataType.INT64)
]

# Build the schema
schema = CollectionSchema(
    fields,
    description="Schema of Medium articles"
)

collection = Collection(
    name="medium_articles_2020", 
    description="Medium articles published between Jan 2020 to August 2020 in prominent publications",
    schema=schema
)

In the above snippet,

id is the primary field. For this field, the parameter is_primary is set to True.
title_vector is a vector field. The parameter dim specifies the vector dimension.
title, link, and publication are string fields. The parameter max_length specifies the maximum number of characters allowed in the string.
reading_time, claps, and responses are integer fields. No extra parameters need to be set on these fields.

For your reference, Zilliz Cloud supports the following field data types:

Boolean value (BOOLEAN)
8-byte floating-point (DOUBLE)
4-byte floating-point (FLOAT)
Float vector (FLOAT_VECTOR)
8-bit integer (INT8)
32-bit integer (INT32)
64-bit integer (INT64)
Variable character (VARCHAR)

Drop a collection

Dropping a collection deletes all information from the collection, including its data, metadata, and indexes. Exercise caution when dropping a collection because this operation is irreversible.

from pymilvus import utility

utility.drop_collection("medium_articles_2020")

Next steps

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