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Ingest unstructured documents into Milvus, a high-performance open-source vector database built for scalable similarity search. The pipeline extracts text from the document, chunks it using a configurable strategy, generates vector embeddings, and upserts the chunks with metadata into a Milvus collection.

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Configuration

"source": {
    "fileAttributes": {
        "unstructuredAttributes": {
            "fileExtension": "pdf",
            "preserveFilename": true
        }
    }
},
"destination": {
    "milvus": {
        "collectionName": "financial_documents",
        "chunking": {
            "strategy": "recursive",
            "chunkSize": 500,
            "chunkOverlap": 50
        },
        "metadata": {
            "company": "Apple Inc",
            "documentType": "10-Q",
            "filingDate": "2026-01-30"
        },
        "embeddingSecretName": "oss/embedding",
        "milvusSecretName": "oss/milvus"
    }
}
FieldTypeDefaultDescription
collectionNamestring(required)Milvus collection name. Auto-created if it doesn’t exist.
chunkingobjectrecursive, 500/50Chunking strategy configuration (see below).
metadatamap{}Static key-value metadata stored as dynamic fields on every chunk.
embeddingSecretNamestring(required)Vault secret name for the embedding API configuration.
milvusSecretNamestring(required)Vault secret name for Milvus connection.

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Supported File Types

FormatDescription
PDF (.pdf)Text extracted via Apache PDFBox
Word (.doc)Text extracted via Apache POI (legacy format)
Word (.docx)Text extracted via Apache POI (modern format)
PowerPoint (.ppt)Text extracted via Apache POI (legacy format)
PowerPoint (.pptx)Text extracted via Apache POI (modern format)
Excel (.xls, .xlsx)Cell values extracted via Apache POI
HTML (.html, .htm)Text extracted via JSoup (tags stripped)
RTF (.rtf)Text extracted via javax.swing RTF parser
Email (.msg)Subject, from, to, and body extracted via Apache POI
Email (.eml)Subject, from, and body extracted via Jakarta Mail
EPUB (.epub)XHTML content extracted and parsed via JSoup
Plain text (.txt, .md, .csv, .json, .xml)Content used directly
For structured data (CSV, JSON, XML), use database destinations (PostgreSQL, MongoDB) instead.

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Vault Secrets

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Milvus connection

vault kv put secret/oss/milvus \
  host="host.docker.internal" \
  port="19530" \
  apiKey=""
FieldDescription
hostMilvus server hostname. Use host.docker.internal for local Milvus.
portgRPC port (default 19530).
apiKeyAPI key / token for Milvus Cloud. Empty string for local instances.

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Embedding API

The embedding API is shared with other vector database destinations. See Qdrant documentation for full details. 
vault kv put secret/oss/embedding \
  endpoint="https://api.openai.com/v1/embeddings" \
  model="text-embedding-3-small" \
  apiKey="sk-..."

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Chunking Strategies

Documents are split into chunks before embedding. Each chunk becomes a separate entity in the Milvus collection with the document’s metadata plus chunk_index, filename, and source_pipeline fields. 
"chunking": {
    "strategy": "recursive",
    "chunkSize": 500,
    "chunkOverlap": 50
}
StrategyDescription
noneNo chunking — one embedding per document. Only for very short documents.
fixedSplit by character count. Fast but may cut mid-sentence.
sentenceSplit on sentence boundaries (. ! ?). Preserves semantic units.
paragraphSplit on double newlines. Ideal for structured documents with clear sections.
recursiveTry \n\n, then \n, then ., then space — best general-purpose default.
  • chunkSize (default 500): maximum characters per chunk
  • chunkOverlap (default 50): characters of overlap between consecutive chunks

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Metadata

Static metadata is stored as dynamic fields on every chunk in the Milvus collection: 
"metadata": {
    "company": "Apple Inc",
    "documentType": "10-Q",
    "filingDate": "2026-01-30"
}
This allows filtered vector search queries combining similarity with metadata predicates. Every entity automatically includes:
  • id — deterministic UUID (idempotent upserts)
  • text — the chunk text
  • chunk_index — position of the chunk in the document
  • filename — original uploaded filename
  • source_pipeline — pipeline name
  • embedding — float vector for similarity search

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How It Works

  1. Upload — an unstructured file is uploaded via POST /api/v1/pipeline/upload
  2. Extract — text is extracted from the document
  3. Chunk — text is split into chunks using the configured strategy
  4. Embed — each chunk is sent to the embedding API to generate a vector
  5. Upsert — vectors are inserted into the Milvus collection with metadata
  6. Notify — a pipeline notification is published on completion
The collection is auto-created on first upsert with a cosine distance index on the embedding field. Dynamic fields are enabled for metadata.

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Running Milvus

Milvus runs outside the pipeline’s Docker Compose (like Qdrant and Weaviate). Unlike simpler vector databases, Milvus requires etcd and MinIO as internal dependencies, so a simple docker run won’t work. Option 1 — Milvus standalone script (recommended): 
curl -sfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/milvus-io/milvus/master/scripts/standalone_embed.sh -o standalone_embed.sh
bash standalone_embed.sh start
To stop: bash standalone_embed.sh stop Option 2 — Milvus docker-compose: 
wget https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/releases/download/v2.4.4/milvus-standalone-docker-compose.yml -O milvus-docker-compose.yml
docker-compose -f milvus-docker-compose.yml up -d
This starts Milvus with its required etcd and MinIO services. For more options, see milvus.io/docs/install_standalone-docker.md.

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Verifying

# Check Milvus is running
curl http://localhost:9091/v1/vector/collections

# List collections
curl http://localhost:9091/v1/vector/collections

# Get collection details
curl http://localhost:9091/v1/vector/collections/describe \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"collectionName": "financial_documents"}'

# Query entities
curl -X POST http://localhost:9091/v1/vector/query \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "collectionName": "financial_documents",
    "filter": "chunk_index >= 0",
    "outputFields": ["text", "chunk_index", "filename"],
    "limit": 5
  }'