A number field is a scalar field that stores numeric values—either whole numbers (integers) or decimal numbers (floating-point). You use number fields for things you want to filter, range query, or join into business logic, like prices, quantities, counters, timestamps, and flags.

Supported number types

VBase supports the same numeric scalar field types as Milvus.

When to use number fields

Number fields are often paired with vector search to make results context-aware.

• E-commerce: filter by price, in_stock, rating
• Observability: filter by latency_ms, status_code, error_rate
• Security: filter by risk_score, is_blocked, event_ts

Example mental model:

“Find similar items AND match my business rules (price < 100, is_active = true).”

Add number fields to a schema

Below is an example schema that adds:

• age as INT64 that allows null and defaults to 18
• price as FLOAT that allows null (no default)

Tip: If you enable dynamic fields, you can insert scalar fields that weren’t declared ahead of time. This is flexible, but it’s usually best to keep critical fields explicitly declared.

# Python 3.10+
from dodil import Client
from dodil.vbase import VBaseConfig, CollectionSchema, FieldSchema, DataType
 
c = Client(
    service_account_id="...",
    service_account_secret="...",
)
 
vbase = c.vbase.connect(
    VBaseConfig(
        host="vbase-db-<id>.infra.dodil.cloud",
        port=443,
        scheme="https",
        db_name="db_<id>",
    )
)
 
fields = [
    # Primary key
    FieldSchema(name="pk", dtype=DataType.INT64, is_primary=True, auto_id=False),
 
    # Number fields
    FieldSchema(name="age", dtype=DataType.INT64, nullable=True, default_value=18),
    FieldSchema(name="price", dtype=DataType.FLOAT, nullable=True),
 
    # Vector field (example)
    FieldSchema(name="embedding", dtype=DataType.FLOAT_VECTOR, dim=1536),
]
 
schema = CollectionSchema(
    fields=fields,
    description="Products with numeric fields",
    enable_dynamic_field=True,
)
 
vbase.create_collection(
    collection_name="products",
    schema=schema,
)