Recommendation System with Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server and Azure OpenAI
APPLIES TO: Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server
This hands-on tutorial shows you how to build a recommender application using Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server and Azure OpenAI Service. Recommendations have applications in different domains – service providers frequently tend to provide recommendations for products and services they offer based on prior history and contextual information collected from the customer and environment.
There are different ways to model recommendation systems. This article explores the simplest form – recommendation based one product corresponding to, say, a prior purchase. This tutorial uses the recipe dataset used in the Semantic Search article and the recommendation is for recipes based on a recipe a customer liked or searched for before.
Prerequisites
- Create an OpenAI account and request access to Azure OpenAI Service.
- Grant access to Azure OpenAI in the desired subscription.
- Grant permissions to create Azure OpenAI resources and to deploy models.
Create and deploy an Azure OpenAI Service resource and a model, deploy the embeddings model text-embedding-ada-002. Copy the deployment name as it is needed to create embeddings.
Enable the azure_ai
and pgvector
extensions
Before you can enable azure_ai
and pgvector
on your Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server instance, you need to add them to your allowlist as described in how to use PostgreSQL extensions and check if correctly added by running SHOW azure.extensions;
.
Then you can install the extension, by connecting to your target database and running the CREATE EXTENSION command. You need to repeat the command separately for every database you want the extension to be available in.
CREATE EXTENSION azure_ai;
CREATE EXTENSION vector;
Configure OpenAI endpoint and key
In the Azure AI services under Resource Management > Keys and Endpoints you can find the endpoint and the keys for your Azure AI resource. Use the endpoint and one of the keys to enable azure_ai
extension to invoke the model deployment.
select azure_ai.set_setting('azure_openai.endpoint','https://<endpoint>.openai.azure.com');
select azure_ai.set_setting('azure_openai.subscription_key', '<API Key>');
Download & Import the Data
- Download the data from Kaggle.
- Connect to your server and create a
test
database, and in it create a table in which you'll import the data. - Import the data.
- Add an embedding column to the table.
- Generate the embeddings.
- Search.
Create the table
CREATE TABLE public.recipes(
rid integer NOT NULL,
recipe_name text,
prep_time text,
cook_time text,
total_time text,
servings integer,
yield text,
ingredients text,
directions text,
rating real,
url text,
cuisine_path text,
nutrition text,
timing text,
img_src text,
PRIMARY KEY (rid)
);
Import the data
Set the following environment variable on the client window, to set encoding to utf-8. This step is necessary because this particular dataset uses the WIN1252 encoding.
Rem on Windows
Set PGCLIENTENCODING=utf-8;
# on Unix based operating systems
export PGCLIENTENCODING=utf-8
Import the data into the table created; note that this dataset contains a header row:
psql -d <database> -h <host> -U <user> -c "\copy recipes FROM <local recipe data file> DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER"
Add a column to store the embeddings
ALTER TABLE recipes ADD COLUMN embedding vector(1536);
Generate embeddings
Generate embeddings for your data using the azure_ai extension. In the following, we vectorize a few different fields, concatenated:
WITH ro AS (
SELECT ro.rid
FROM
recipes ro
WHERE
ro.embedding is null
LIMIT 500
)
UPDATE
recipes r
SET
embedding = azure_openai.create_embeddings('text-embedding-ada-002', r.recipe_name||' '||r.cuisine_path||' '||r.ingredients||' '||r.nutrition||' '||r.directions)
FROM
ro
WHERE
r.rid = ro.rid;
Repeat the command, until there are no more rows to process.
Tip
Play around with the LIMIT
. With a high value, the statement might fail halfway through due to throttling imposed by Azure OpenAI. If it fails, wait for at least one minute and execute the command again.
Create a search function in your database for convenience:
create function
recommend_recipe(sampleRecipeId int, numResults int)
returns table(
out_recipeName text,
out_nutrition text,
out_similarityScore real)
as $$
declare
queryEmbedding vector(1536);
sampleRecipeText text;
begin
sampleRecipeText := (select
recipe_name||' '||cuisine_path||' '||ingredients||' '||nutrition||' '||directions
from
recipes where rid = sampleRecipeId);
queryEmbedding := (azure_openai.create_embeddings('text-embedding-ada-002',sampleRecipeText));
return query
select
distinct r.recipe_name,
r.nutrition,
(r.embedding <=> queryEmbedding)::real as score
from
recipes r
order by score asc limit numResults; -- cosine distance
end $$
language plpgsql;
Now just invoke the function to search for the recommendation:
select out_recipename, out_similarityscore from recommend_recipe(1, 20); -- search for 20 recipe recommendations that closest to recipeId 1
And explore the results:
out_recipename | out_similarityscore
---------------------------------------+---------------------
Apple Pie by Grandma Ople | 0
Easy Apple Pie | 0.05137232
Grandma's Iron Skillet Apple Pie | 0.054287136
Old Fashioned Apple Pie | 0.058492836
Apple Hand Pies | 0.06449003
Apple Crumb Pie | 0.07290977
Old-Fashioned Apple Dumplings | 0.078374185
Fried Apple Pies | 0.07918481
Apple Pie Filling | 0.084320426
Apple Turnovers | 0.08576391
Dutch Apple Pie with Oatmeal Streusel | 0.08779895
Apple Crisp - Perfect and Easy | 0.09170883
Delicious Cinnamon Baked Apples | 0.09384012
Easy Apple Crisp with Pie Filling | 0.09477234
Jump Rope Pie | 0.09503954
Easy Apple Strudel | 0.095167875
Apricot Pie | 0.09634114
Easy Apple Crisp with Oat Topping | 0.09708358
Baked Apples | 0.09826993
Pear Pie | 0.099974394
(20 rows)
Share your suggestions and bugs with the Azure Database for PostgreSQL product team.
Related content
- Integrate Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server with Azure Cognitive Services.
- Generate vector embeddings in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server with locally deployed LLM (Preview).
- Integrate Azure Database for PostgreSQL with Azure Machine Learning Services.
- Generate vector embeddings with Azure OpenAI in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server.
- Azure AI extension in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server.
- Generative AI with Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server.
- Semantic Search with Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server and Azure OpenAI.
- Enable and use pgvector in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server.