Database Collection

Creating a Database Collection

You can Create a Database Collection with the following steps:

• Log in to the Admin Console, go to the Collections tab, and click Create a New Collection or the "+" icon.

• Select Database Collection as the Collection Type.

• Enter a unique name (e.g., DatabaseCollection).

• Set Collection Access (Private or Public) and Encryption as needed.

• Choose the content language if it’s not English.

• Click Save to create the collection.

  

• After creating the Database Collection, you will be taken to the Database Settings tab.

Supported Databases

SearchBlox supports indexing from these databases:

Database Settings

• Database settings must be configured for Database Collections.

• Mandatory settings for databases like MySQL, Oracle, etc., include:

  • Database Type

  • Host IP/Name

  • Host Port Number

  • Database Name

  • Database Username

  • Database Password

  • SQL Query

    

• The following table lists all the available settings for Database Collections.

🚧

NOTE:

• While providing a SQL Query in Database Settings page, make sure to provide the primary key as uid else while reindexing/scheduled indexing duplicate documents gets added.
• If you notice document missing while scheduled index/reindex, please increase the SQL Settings-Fetch Size, which you will find under Settings page as shown in the following screenshots.

After saving the Database settings, test the connection. The connection must be successful for indexing to work.

Synonyms

Synonyms help the search show relevant documents even when the exact search word is not used.
For example, if someone searches for “global,” the results can also include documents that use “world” or “international.”
We have an option to load Synonyms from the existing documents.

Stopwords

Stopwords are common, high-frequency words that carry minimal semantic value and are typically excluded during text processing, indexing, or search operations. Examples include articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, but, or), prepositions (in, on, about), and auxiliary verbs (is, was, would, had).

Purpose:

Reduce noise in search indexing and text analysis
Improve processing efficiency by excluding low-value tokens
Enhance search relevance by prioritizing meaningful keywords

Schedule and Index

Set when and how often a collection should be indexed. SearchBlox supports these schedule options:

• Once
• Hourly
• Daily
• Every 48 Hours
• Every 96 Hours
• Weekly
• Monthly

The following operations can be performed in Database collections.

Data Fields Tab

The Data Fields tab lets you create custom fields for search and view the default fields in non-encrypted collections.
SearchBlox supports 4 types of Data Fields:

• After configuring Data Fields, you must clear and re-index the collection for changes to take effect.

To know more about Data Fields please refer to Data Fields Tab

Prompts

When LLM/RAG is enabled, you can edit AI-based prompts for Title, Description, Topic, Image Description, and Smart FAQs.
You can customize these prompts anytime, and use Restore Default to reset them back to the original SearchBlox settings.

Models

The Models section lets you override the global embedding, reranking, and LLM settings for this specific collection. Changes made here apply only to the current collection and do not affect other collections.

Embedding

• Provider specifies the embedding provider used to generate vector representations of documents.
• Model defines the embedding model used to convert document content into vectors for semantic search.

Reranker

• Provider specifies the reranker provider used for improving search result relevance.
• Model defines the reranker model used to re-score and reorder search results based on relevance.

LLM

• Provider specifies the Large Language Model provider used for AI-powered features.

• Model defines the LLM used for tasks such as document enrichment, summaries, and SmartFAQs.

• These settings override global configurations and apply only to the current collection.

👍

Best Practices

• Verify the type of application or database to be indexed and provide the appropriate database settings.
• If your SQL SELECT query doesn’t have a unique ID, create a view with a unique ID and use it in the query to fetch data.
• For multiple collections, schedule them so that only 2–3 collections index at the same time.

Viewing Search Results

• View the search results by searching for the records here: https://localhost:8443/search/index.html.
• After clicking the search results, the data will appear in a grid format.

If you want search results in the grid view, use SearchBlox's Database plugin. Learn more about Database Search