How deeply does Microsoft Azure in Action cover information retrieval?

Defines retrieval through an analogy but gives no search procedure or configuration steps.

Information retrieval

As explained in Microsoft Azure in Action

Retrieval is the process of selecting relevant stored information to provide as context for a language model.

A language model can view only a limited amount of text at once. If a book or conversation is too long to fit, retrieval means fetching the most relevant pieces when they are needed, rather than supplying everything. section 7.1

The fixed-size suitcase

Think of the model’s text window as a suitcase. For an oversized book, you could summarize it, split it into chunks, or retrieve only the pieces needed for the current task. The aim is to provide useful context without overloading the model. section 7.1

How Microsoft Azure in Action covers it

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Also explained in

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Introduction to Generative AI, Second EditionRetrieval is the process of finding relevant information from an external collection in response to a query or representation.
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Effective Conversational AIThe retrieval phase is the stage of a retrieval-augmented generation process that finds and obtains information relevant to an input.
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Grokking AI ApplicationsThe process of finding and obtaining relevant information from a data source for use in an AI application.
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MongoDB 8.0 in Action, Third EditionInformation retrieval is the process of finding relevant information from a collection of stored data in response to an information need.
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Natural Language Processing in Action, Second EditionFull-text search retrieves documents by searching their complete textual contents rather than only structured fields.
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Elasticsearch in Action, Second EditionSearching textual content using tokenization, matching, relevance scoring, or related linguistic analysis.
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Data Storytelling with Altair and AIInformation retrieval is the process of searching for and returning relevant information from a collection or external knowledge source.
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Build a Website with ChatGPTSearch is the process of finding records whose data matches a user-supplied word or phrase.
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Ensemble Methods for Machine LearningInformation retrieval is the field concerned with finding and ranking relevant information items in response to queries.
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Building Reliable AI SystemsRetrieval is the process of finding relevant information from an external collection to supply as model context.

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Related concepts

retrieval-augmented generationused by · Retrieval-augmented generation is a technique that retrieves relevant information from external sources and supplies it as context to a generative model when producing an output.
hybrid searchused by · Hybrid search is an information-retrieval technique that combines multiple retrieval methods or relevance signals to find or rank relevant results.
similarity searchincludes · Similarity search is a retrieval technique that finds or ranks items by comparing their representations with a query according to a similarity or distance measure.
chunkingused by · Chunking is the process of dividing content or data into smaller units for processing, retrieval, or organization.
agentic RAGused by · Agentic RAG is a retrieval-augmented generation approach in which an agent dynamically decides how and when to retrieve information, often iterating or using tools before generating a response.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Microsoft Azure in Action. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.