How can I implement an exponential backoff retry mechanism for vector database requests?

Below is an example of how you might implement a retry mechanism on the client side. Note that Qdrant itself doesn’t provide automatic retries out of the box for server availability issues, so you'll need to wrap your request logic with retry handling (e.g., with exponential backoff).

Below is a sample Java code snippet demonstrating how you can retry an asynchronous upsert operation if a server error occurs:

JAVACopied
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import static io.qdrant.client.PointIdFactory.id;
import static io.qdrant.client.VectorsFactory.vectors;
import static io.qdrant.client.VectorFactory.multiVector;

import io.qdrant.client.QdrantClient;
import io.qdrant.client.QdrantGrpcClient;
import io.qdrant.client.grpc.Points.PointStruct;

public class QdrantRetryExample {
    private static final int MAX_ATTEMPTS = 5;
    private static final long BASE_DELAY_MS = 1000;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        QdrantClient client = new QdrantClient(
            QdrantGrpcClient.newBuilder("localhost", 6334, false).build());
        
        boolean success = false;
        int attempt = 0;
        
        while(!success && attempt < MAX_ATTEMPTS) {
            try {
                client.upsertAsync(
                    "your_collection_name",
                    List.of(PointStruct.newBuilder()
                        .setId(id(1))
                        .setVectors(vectors(multiVector(new float[][] {
                            {-0.013f,  0.020f, -0.007f, -0.111f},
                            {-0.030f, -0.055f,  0.001f,  0.072f},
                            {-0.041f,  0.014f, -0.032f, -0.062f}
                        })))
                        .build())
                ).get();
                
                // If we reach here, the operation succeeded.
                success = true;
                System.out.println("Upsert successful on attempt " + (attempt + 1));
            } catch (Exception ex) {
                attempt++;
                System.err.println("Attempt " + attempt + " failed: " + ex.getMessage());
                
                if (attempt == MAX_ATTEMPTS) {
                    System.err.println("All attempts failed. Aborting operation.");
                    break;
                }
                
                // Exponential backoff delay before retrying.
                long delay = (long) (BASE_DELAY_MS * Math.pow(2, attempt - 1));
                try {
                    TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.sleep(delay);
                } catch (InterruptedException ie) {
                    Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
                    System.err.println("Retry interrupted.");
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Explanation

• Retry Loop: The code wraps the upsert API call inside a while loop. It continues retrying until the operation is successful or the maximum number of attempts is reached.
• Exponential Backoff: After a failure (for example, due to temporary server availability errors), the code waits for an exponentially increasing delay before trying again.
• Error Handling: If all attempts fail, the exception is logged and the loop is broken.

This approach gives you flexibility, allowing you to adapt the logic (e.g., adjusting delay times or handling specific error types) as required by your application’s needs.