title	Migrating from Memory Stores to Vector Stores
description	Describes how to migrate from using memory stores to vector stores in semantic kernel.
zone_pivot_groups	programming-languages
author	westey-m
ms.topic	conceptual
ms.author	westey
ms.date	03/06/2025
ms.service	semantic-kernel

::: zone pivot="programming-language-csharp"

Migrating from Memory Stores to Vector Stores

Semantic Kernel provides two distinct abstractions for interacting with vector stores.

A set of legacy abstractions where the primary interface is Microsoft.SemanticKernel.Memory.IMemoryStore.
A new and improved set of abstractions where the primary abstract base class is Microsoft.Extensions.VectorData.VectorStore.

The Vector Store abstractions provide more functionality than what the Memory Store abstractions provide, e.g. being able to define your own schema, supporting multiple vectors per record (database permitting), supporting more vector types than ReadOnlyMemory<float>, etc. We recommend using the Vector Store abstractions instead of the Memory Store abstractions.

Tip

For a more detailed comparison of the Memory Store and Vector Store abstractions see here.