Filter Reference

Filter expressions in WHERE clauses for QUERY, SCROLL, UPDATE, and DELETE statements.

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Comparison Operators

WHERE field = 'value'        -- equality
WHERE field != 'value'       -- inequality
WHERE field > 10             -- greater than
WHERE field >= 10            -- greater than or equal
WHERE field < 100            -- less than
WHERE field <= 100           -- less than or equal
WHERE field = 3.14           -- float equality
WHERE field = true           -- boolean equality

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Range

WHERE field BETWEEN 10 AND 100
WHERE year BETWEEN 2020 AND 2026
WHERE score BETWEEN 0.5 AND 1.0

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Set Membership

WHERE status IN ('active', 'pending', 'reviewed')
WHERE status NOT IN ('deleted', 'archived')
WHERE priority IN ('high', 'medium')
WHERE year IN (2024, 2025, 2026)

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Null and Empty Checks

WHERE field IS NULL
WHERE field IS NOT NULL
WHERE field IS EMPTY
WHERE field IS NOT EMPTY

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Text Matching

WHERE content MATCH 'hello world'           -- full-text match
WHERE content MATCH ANY 'hello world'       -- match any term
WHERE content MATCH PHRASE 'hello world'    -- exact phrase match

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Logical Operators

WHERE a = 1 AND b = 2
WHERE a = 1 OR b = 2
WHERE NOT a = 1
WHERE (a = 1 OR b = 2) AND c = 3
WHERE (team = 'search' OR team = 'infra') AND severity >= 3

Precedence (highest to lowest)

1. Comparison operators, BETWEEN, IN, IS, MATCH
2. NOT
3. AND
4. OR

Parentheses override precedence.

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Nested Fields

WHERE meta.source = 'pubmed'
WHERE doc.author.name = 'Alice'

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Examples

-- Filter by status and year
QUERY 'search' FROM docs LIMIT 10 WHERE status = 'published' AND year >= 2024

-- Filter with set membership
QUERY 'retrieval' FROM docs LIMIT 10 WHERE category IN ('ml', 'nlp', 'cv')

-- Filter with range
QUERY 'articles' FROM docs LIMIT 10 WHERE score BETWEEN 0.8 AND 1.0

-- Filter with text matching
QUERY 'search' FROM docs LIMIT 10 WHERE title MATCH PHRASE 'vector database'

-- Complex filter
QUERY 'emergency' FROM docs LIMIT 10
  WHERE (specialty = 'neurology' OR specialty = 'cardiology')
    AND priority = 'high'
    AND status != 'discharged'

-- Null check
QUERY 'records' FROM docs LIMIT 10 WHERE diagnosis IS NOT NULL

-- Filter in SCROLL
SCROLL FROM docs WHERE topic = 'search' AND year >= 2024 LIMIT 20

-- Filter in DELETE
DELETE FROM docs WHERE status = 'archived'

-- Filter in UPDATE
UPDATE docs SET PAYLOAD = {'status': 'reviewed'} WHERE status = 'pending'

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Per-Prefetch Filters

Filters can be applied to individual CTE prefetches:

WITH
  dense AS (QUERY 'search' USING dense LIMIT 200),
  sparse AS (QUERY 'search' USING sparse LIMIT 300)
QUERY 'search' FROM docs LIMIT 10
  PREFETCH (
    dense WHERE category = 'tech' SCORE THRESHOLD 0.6,
    sparse WHERE priority = 'high' SCORE THRESHOLD 0.3
  )
  FUSION RRF

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Payload Indexes

For efficient filtering, create payload indexes:

CREATE INDEX ON docs FOR status TYPE keyword
CREATE INDEX ON docs FOR year TYPE integer
CREATE INDEX ON docs FOR score TYPE float
CREATE INDEX ON docs FOR tags TYPE keyword WITH (is_tenant = true)
CREATE INDEX ON docs FOR content TYPE text WITH (tokenizer = 'word', lowercase = true)

Always Create Indexes

Without an index, Qdrant performs a full scan. With heavy filtering, always create indexes first.

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Index Types

Type	Use For
keyword	String fields, enums, tags
integer	Integer fields
float	Float fields
bool	Boolean fields
uuid	UUID string fields
datetime	ISO 8601 datetime fields
geo	{lat, lon} geo coordinate fields
text	Full-text search fields

Text Index Options

CREATE INDEX ON docs FOR content TYPE text WITH (
  tokenizer = 'word',           -- 'word', 'whitespace', 'prefix', 'multilingual'
  min_token_len = 2,
  max_token_len = 20,
  lowercase = true,
  ascii_folding = true,
  phrase_matching = true,
  stopwords = ['en']
)

Keyword Index Options

CREATE INDEX ON docs FOR tenant_id TYPE keyword WITH (
  is_tenant = true,             -- tenant-aware HNSW partitioning
  on_disk = true,               -- store index on disk
  enable_hnsw = false           -- disable HNSW for this field
)