RAG Survey

Core Contribution

Comprehensive survey of Retrieval-Augmented Generation techniques, architectures, and applications. Provides taxonomy of RAG approaches and evaluation methods.

RAG Architecture Components

Retriever: Finds relevant documents/passages Generator: Produces output conditioned on retrieved context Integration: How retrieval and generation interact

Key Patterns

  • Dense retrieval vs. sparse retrieval
  • Single-hop vs. multi-hop retrieval
  • Early vs. late fusion of retrieved context
  • Iterative retrieval-generation cycles

Evaluation Challenges

  • Retrieval quality vs. generation quality
  • Attribution and faithfulness
  • Handling retrieval failures gracefully

Related: 07-molecule—rag-core-tradeoffs, 07-molecule—vectors-vs-graphs