Advanced Implementation of LlamaIndex RAG on Google Cloud

 

An advanced implementation of LlamaIndex RAG on Google Cloud Overview. Large Language Model (LLM)-powered apps are being built differently by RAG, but unlike tabular machine learning, where XGBoost is the best, there isn't a "go-to" solution. Quick means to test retrieval algorithms are needed by developers. This article demonstrates how to use the Llamaindex, Streamlit, RAGAS, and Gemini models from Google Cloud to rapidly create and assess RAG solutions. It will go beyond fundamental instruction by creating reusable parts, extending frameworks, and regularly testing performance.

RAG LlamaIndex

Using LlamaIndex to build RAG apps is really effective. Data organization, searching, and connecting are made simpler with LLMs. The breakdown of the LlamaIndex RAG workflow:

chunking, embedding, arranging, and structuring queryable materials for indexing and storage.

Finding document sections that a user has requested. Nodes are document chunks obtained from the LlamaIndex index.

Rerank a set of pertinent nodes to increase their relevance after analysis.

Once you have a final set of pertinent nodes, compile a user response.

To complete these stages, LlamaIndex offers a variety of integrations and combinations, ranging from agentic techniques to keyword search.

Indexing and storing

The process of indexing and storing is intricate. You need to select algorithms, build unique indexes for various data sources, parse, chunk, and embed data, and extract data. Indexing and storage include pre-processing a large number of documents so that a retrieval system can retrieve key parts and storing them, notwithstanding their complexity.

Available via Google Cloud, the Document AI Layout Parser facilitates path selection by processing HTML, PDF, DOCX, and PPTX (in preview) and identifying text blocks, paragraphs, tables, lists, titles, headings, and page headers and footers automatically. Layout Parser uses a comprehensive layout analysis to preserve the document's organizational structure in order to obtain context-aware information.

It needs to create chunked document LlamaIndex nodes. To keep an eye on the parent document structure, LlamaIndex nodes include metadata attributes. A long text divided into sections can be expressed using LlamaIndex as a doubly-linked list of nodes with the PREV and NEXT relationships set to the node IDs.

It is feasible to preprocess LlamaIndex nodes in preparation for sophisticated retrieval techniques like auto-merging retrieval prior to embedding. Nodes from a document are grouped into hierarchies using the Hierarchical Node Parser. A larger section of a document is reflected at each level of the hierarchy, which links to 1024-character parent chunks from 512-character leaf chunks. The remaining chunks are kept in a document store for ID queries; only the leaf chunks are embedded in this hierarchy. During the retrieval process, vector similarity is only applied to leaf chunks, and the hierarchical relationship is used to extract additional context from larger document sections. Using this logic, LlamaIndex Auto-merging Retriever operates.

Choose where and how to store the nodes for later retrieval after embedding them. Vector databases are understandable, but in order to support hybrid search together with semantic retrieval, content may need to be stored in a different way. It shows how to set up a hybrid store to store document chunks as embedded vectors and key-value stores in Google Cloud's Vertex AI Vector Store and Firestore. This might be used to query documents based on id/metadata matches or vector similarity.

To compare approach combinations, several indices ought to be developed. It might create a flat index of parts that are fixed in size as an alternative to the hierarchical index.
Getting Back

For context-based response, retrieval provides an LLM with a restricted set of pertinent documents from its vector store/docstore combination. This work is well abstracted by the LlamaIndex Retriever module. The _retrieve function, which takes a query and returns a list of NodesWithScore that is, document chunks with scored relevance to the inquiry is implemented by subclasses of this module. In LlamaIndex, retrievers are a popular breed. To obtain the top k NodesWithScore, always use a baseline retriever that does vector similarity search.

Autonomous extraction


The hierarchical index structure that was previously built is not included in baseline retriever. An auto-merging retriever can recover nodes based on vector similarity and the source document thanks to the chunk structure of a document store. It might get additional material that includes the original node fragments. Five node chunks could be retrieved by the baseline_retriever depending on vector similarity.

Such chunks (512 characters) might not have enough information to address its complex query. Three of the five paragraphs may refer to different paragraphs within a section and come from the same page. Since they recorded their hierarchy, relationship to larger chunks, and togetherness, the auto-merging retriever may "walk" the hierarchy, obtaining bigger chunks and sending a larger portion of the document for the LLM to create a response. The retrieval precision of reduced chunk sizes is balanced with the LLM's requirement for pertinent data.

Search LlamaIndex


It needs to figure out the best configuration for a set of NodesWithScores. Information may need to be formatted or deleted. To acquire the required response from the user, it must then provide these fragments to an LLM. Answer synthesis, node post-processing, and retrieval are all handled by the LlamaIndex QueryEngine. A QueryEngine can be created by passing in a retriever, response synthesizer, and node-post-processing method (if applicable) as inputs. A text question is accepted by QueryEngine's query and aquery (asynchronous query) methods, which return a Response object containing a list of NodeWithScores and the LLM-generated response.

Envisioned embedding of documents


Most Llama-index retrievers operate by encapsulating the user's query and computing vector similarity with the vector storage. This might not be adequate because the language structures of the query and answer differ. To tackle this, Hypothetical Document Embedding (HyDE) makes use of LLM hallucination. Without providing any context, conjure up a response to the user's question, then insert it into the vector storage for a vector similarity search.

LLM node reordering

The _postprocess_nodes function, which accepts the query and list of NodesWithScores as input and outputs a new list, is implemented by a Node Post-Processor in Llamaindex. To raise their position, Googles could have to rerank the retriever's nodes based on LLM relevancy. Reranking items for a query can be done with explicit models or by using a general LLM.

Synthesis of a response


There are numerous ways to instruct an LLM on how to react to a list of NodeWithScores. Huge nodes might be summarized by Google Cloud before asking the LLM for a definitive response. It might want to give the LLM another chance to clarify or enhance a first response. We can determine the LLM's response to a list of nodes with the aid of the LlamaIndex Response Synthesizer.

Agent REACT

ReAct is used by Google Cloud to incorporate a reasoning loop into its query pipeline (Yao, et al. 2022). This enables an LLM to respond to complex queries requiring several retrieval procedures using chain-of-thought reasoning. The ReAct agent can use its query_engine as a tool to think and act in Llamaindex in order to create a ReAct loop. Here, you can add more tools to help the ReAct agent narrow down or choose results.

Complete Development of QueryEngine

Once you have selected a variety of options from the aforementioned steps, you need to create the logic to build your QueryEngine based on an input configuration. Here are some instances of functions.

Techniques for Assessment

It is simple to submit inquiries and obtain context and RAG pipeline replies after a QueryEngine object has been created. After that, it might construct a small front-end to experiment with the QueryEngine object (conversation vs. batch) and include it in a backend service similar to FastAPI.

The response can be analyzed by using the query, gained context, and response when interacting with the RAG pipeline. Using these three categories, it may calculate assessment metrics and compare responses in an unbiased manner. RAGAS provides heuristic measurements for response integrity, answer relevancy, and context relevancy based on this trio. Every time they have a chat, they compute and display these.

Finding ground-truth answers should also be accomplished through expert annotation. Ground truth may provide a more accurate assessment of RAG pipeline performance. By asking an LLM if the response fits the ground truth or other RAGAS measures like context precision and memory, it may be possible to calculate LLM-graded accuracy.

Implementation

/query_rag and /eval_batch will be made available via the FastAPI backend. For one-time interactions with the query engine that can assess the response instantly, use queries/rag/. With /eval_batch, users can select an eval_set from a Cloud Storage bucket and do batch evaluation with query engine settings.

Not only can Streamlit's Chat components create sliders and input forms that meet its requirements, but they also simplify the process of creating a user interface and interacting with the QueryEngine object through a FastAPI backend.

In summary

When you experiment with various techniques and RAG pipeline changes, you may build a comprehensive RAG application on GCP with maximum flexibility by utilizing modular technologies like as LlamaIndex, RAGAS, FastAPI, and streamlit. Perhaps some magical combination of options, prompts, and algorithms will reveal the "XGBoost" equivalent for your RAG problem.

Post a Comment

0 Comments