πŸ” Query Interface

Querying an index or a graph involves a three main components:

  • Retrievers: A retriever class retrieves a set of Nodes from an index given a query.

  • Response Synthesizer: This class takes in a set of Nodes and synthesizes an answer given a query.

  • Query Engine: This class takes in a query and returns a Response object. It can make use

    of Retrievers and Response Synthesizer modules under the hood.

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Design Philosophy: Progressive Disclosure of Complexity

Progressive disclosure of complexity is a design philosophy that aims to strike ka balance between the needs of beginners and experts. The idea is that you should give users the simplest and most straightforward interface or experience possible when they first encounter a system or product, but then gradually reveal more complexity and advanced features as users become more familiar with the system. This can help prevent users from feeling overwhelmed or intimidated by a system that seems too complex, while still giving experienced users the tools they need to accomplish advanced tasks.

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In the case of LlamaIndex, we’ve tried to balance simplicity and complexity by providing a high-level API that’s easy to use out of the box, but also a low-level composition API that gives experienced users the control they need to customize the system to their needs. By doing this, we hope to make LlamaIndex accessible to beginners while still providing the flexibility and power that experienced users need.

Resources

  • The basic query interface over an index is found in our usage pattern guide. The guide details how to specify parameters for a retriever/synthesizer/query engine over a single index structure.

  • A more advanced query interface is found in our composability guide. The guide describes how to specify a graph over multiple index structures.

  • We also provide a guide to some of our more advanced components, which can be added to a retriever or a query engine. See our Query Transformations and Node Postprocessor modules.

Guides