Summary
In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Kacper Łukawski from Qdrant about integrating MCP servers with vector databases to process unstructured data. Kacper shares his experience in data engineering, from building big data pipelines in the automotive industry to leveraging large language models (LLMs) for transforming unstructured datasets into valuable assets. He discusses the challenges of building data pipelines for unstructured data and how vector databases facilitate semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications. Kacper delves into the intricacies of vector storage and search, including metadata and contextual elements, and explores the evolution of vector engines beyond RAG to applications like semantic search and anomaly detection. The conversation covers the role of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers in simplifying data integration and retrieval processes, highlighting the need for experimentation and evaluation when adopting LLMs, and offering practical advice on optimizing vector search costs and fine-tuning embedding models for improved search quality.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Kacper Łukawski about how MCP servers can be paired with vector databases to streamline processing of unstructured data

Interview

Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
LLMs are enabling the derivation of useful data assets from unstructured sources. What are the challenges that teams face in building the pipelines to support that work?
How has the role of vector engines grown or evolved in the past ~2 years as LLMs have gained broader adoption?
- Beyond its role as a store of context for agents, RAG, etc. what other applications are common for vector databaes?
In the ecosystem of vector engines, what are the distinctive elements of Qdrant?
How has the MCP specification simplified the work of processing unstructured data?
Can you describe the toolchain and workflow involved in building a data pipeline that leverages an MCP for generating embeddings?
helping data engineers gain confidence in non-deterministic workflows
bringing application/ML/data teams into collaboration for determining the impact of e.g. chunking strategies, embedding model selection, etc.
What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen MCP and Qdrant used?
What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on vector use cases?
When is MCP and/or Qdrant the wrong choice?
What do you have planned for the future of MCP with Qdrant?

Contact Info

Parting Question

From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?

Closing Announcements

Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The AI Engineering Podcast is your guide to the fast-moving world of building AI systems.
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Links

The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

Sonic TALK - 429 Bright Sparks Project