Configurable Feature Implementation to Access External Retrieval Features

[silvanheller]

Based on the work done in the VBS 23 Branch, and to make vitrivr usable with retrieval features that are either not easily portable to java or only accessible externally, we should integrate a configurable retrieval feature which calls for extraction and retrieval an external REST API.

The feature should have at least the following configuration options:

• API endpoint
• Type: Vector or Text
• Vector length

To keep the repo clean, we do not provide an example external feature (e.g., python) in the repo itself but in the wiki.

[lucaro]

Doing this properly would presumably require some specified API with which these external services can be queried.

[sauterl]

Also, I would like to add that in certain use cases, it is desirable to have multiple instances of Cineast running on the same machine. At times the feature set is overlapping and as such, it is desirable to be able to configure these features in such a way that they can be shared across cineast instances (on the same machine) while simultaneously enabling the non-sharing of such features. In particular, service parameters should be freely definable.