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Choosing the Best Approach for Your RAG Application

Choosing the Best Approach for Your RAG Application

Learn how to choose the right RAG approach for your application.

In the previous lessons, we explored the foundational concepts of RAG through naive RAG and saw some of the enhancements offered by advanced RAG. Now, we’ll expand our understanding by comparing modular RAG with the rest of the prominent paradigms to help you choose the most suitable approach for your specific application.

A comparative analysis of RAG paradigms

The following table summarizes the key characteristics of Naive RAG, Advanced RAG, and Modular RAG:

Paradigm

Description

Pros

Cons

Applications

Naive RAG (Retrieve-Read)

Simplest paradigm with indexing, retrieval, and generation.

Easy to implement, computationally efficient.

Limited control over retrieved information, LLM might struggle with synthesis.

Simple question answering, short document summarization.

Advanced RAG (Retrieve-Read-Rewrite-Rerank)

Builds on Naive RAG with pre-retrieval and post-retrieval processing for improved retrieval quality.

More control over information, improved response relevance.

More complex to implement than Naive RAG.

Complex question answering, longer document summarization.

Modular RAG (Flexible Architecture)

Most versatile paradigm with specialized modules for enhanced retrieval and processing

Highly customizable, allows for experimentation and innovation.

Most complex to implement, requires deeper understanding of individual RAG components.

Domain-specific question answering, tailored creative text generation tasks.

Choosing the optimal RAG paradigm

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