ChatVectorDBChain vs. agent + ConversationBufferMemory for chat

[phiweger]

Hi,

I am a bit confused as to what is the best approach to implement the "chatting with a document store". There seem to be two approaches to do this:

• ChatVectorDBChain -- https://github.com/mayooear/gpt4-pdf-chatbot-langchain
• agent + ConversationBufferMemory -- https://github.com/jerryjliu/llama_index/blob/main/examples/chatbot/Chatbot_SEC.ipynb

Is there an advantage to using ChatVectorDBChain?

Thank you very much!

[ankitbko]

Jumping on this and adding another question -

• How do you use ChatVectorDBChain with an agent? If we create a function wrapper over ChatVectorDBChain and use it as tool, won't we loose the source_document that it returns?

[sondt2709]

ChatVectorDBChain was deprecated as mentioned here https://github.com/hwchase17/langchain/blob/master/langchain/chains/conversational_retrieval/base.py#L192

[wangdong2023]

@cver where can I find the reasoning behind deprecating ChatVectorDBChain? ChatVectorDBChain appears in a lot of tutorials from hwchase17, and I think it's the first thing a lot of people is using because of that.

[sondt2709]

@cver where can I find the reasoning behind deprecating ChatVectorDBChain? ChatVectorDBChain appears in a lot of tutorials from hwchase17, and I think it's the first thing a lot of people is using because of that.

I have no idea but I think it's just a matter of naming https://github.com/hwchase17/langchain/blob/v0.0.150/langchain/chains/conversational_retrieval/base.py#L211 just replace to ConversationalRetrievalChain, it would be fine

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi, @phiweger! I'm Dosu, and I'm helping the LangChain team manage their backlog. I wanted to let you know that we are marking this issue as stale.

From what I understand, you were seeking clarification on the advantages of using ChatVectorDBChain compared to the agent + ConversationBufferMemory approach for implementing "chatting with a document store". Ankitbko and cver have provided some insights and questions in the comments. Ankitbko asked about using ChatVectorDBChain with an agent, while cver mentioned that ChatVectorDBChain has been deprecated and suggested using ConversationalRetrievalChain instead. Wangdong2023 also asked for the reasoning behind deprecating ChatVectorDBChain, to which cver suggested that it may be a matter of naming and provided a replacement.

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