How to use IBM® App Connect with Milvus
Milvus is an open source, high-performance vector database that is designed to efficiently store and search large volumes of unstructured data.
App Connect
Enterprise as a Service connector-
Local
connector in containers (Continuous Delivery release) 13.0.2.2-r2 or later
Supported product and API versions
To find out which product and API versions this connector supports, see Detailed System Requirements on the IBM Support page.
Connecting to Milvus
Complete the connection fields that you see in the App Connect Designer page or flow editor. If necessary, work with your Milvus administrator to obtain these values.
- Server URL is the URL for the API server that makes runtime calls.
- Token is the token that is used to access the API endpoints. To obtain a
token, use a colon (:) to concatenate the username and password that you use to access your Milvus
instance. For example,
root:milvus. For more information, see Authenticate User Access on the Milvus documentation page. - Set Allow self-signed certificates to true if you want to be able to accept self-signed certificates that are trusted and used only in a nonproduction environment. The default is false.
- Override server URL is required if you want to connect to an endpoint in
a private network by using the private network client, or if you want to override the server URL.
Specify an override value for the host and port for the connector in the format
<http or https>://<host_name>:<port>. If you're not using the private network client or don't need an override, don't enter a value in this field. - Private network connection: Select the name of a private network
connection that App Connect uses to connect to your private
network. This list is populated with the names of private network connections that are created from
the
Private network connections
page in the Designer instance. You see this field only if a switch server is configured for this Designer instance. For more information, see Connecting to a private network from App Connect Designer. (In App Connect Designer 12.0.10.0-r1 or earlier instances that include this field, the display name is shown as Agent name.)
To connect to a Milvus endpoint from the App Connect Designer Applications and APIs page for the first time, expand Milvus, then click Connect.
Before you use the account that is created in App Connect in a flow, rename the account to something meaningful that helps you to identify it. To rename the account on the Applications and APIs page, select the account, open its options menu (⋮), then click Rename Account.
General Considerations
Before you use App Connect Designer with Milvus, take note of the following considerations:
- You can see lists of the trigger events and actions that are available
on the Applications and APIs
page of the App Connect Designer.
For some applications, the events and actions depend on the environment and whether the connector supports configurable events and dynamic discovery of actions. If the application supports configurable events, you see a Show more configurable events link under the events list. If the application supports dynamic discovery of actions, you see a Show more link under the actions list.
- If you are using multiple accounts for an application, the set of fields that is displayed when you select an action for that application can vary for different accounts. In the flow editor, some applications always provide a curated set of static fields for an action. Other applications use dynamic discovery to retrieve the set of fields that are configured on the instance that you are connected to. For example, if you have two accounts for two instances of an application, the first account might use settings that are ready for immediate use. However, the second account might be configured with extra custom fields.
Events and Actions
Milvus events
These events are for changes in this application that trigger a flow to start completing the actions in the flow.
Milvus actions
Your flow completes these actions on this application.
| Object | Action | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Collections | Retrieve collections | This operation retrieves all collection names in the specified database |
| Databases | Retrieve all databases | This operation retrieves all databases in the current Milvus instance |
| Vectors | Delete vector | This operation deletes entities by their IDs or with a Boolean expression |
| Hybrid search vector | This operation searches for entities based on vector similarity and scalar filtering and reranks the results by using a specified strategy | |
| Insert vector | This operation inserts data into a specific collection | |
| Retrieve vectors | This operation conducts a filtering on the scalar field with a specified Boolean expression | |
| Search vector | This operation conducts a vector similarity search with an optional scalar filtering expression |
Model Context Protocol (MCP) support
- Vectors