AI & LLM Engineering for .NET Architects
Lesson 14 of 30 47% of course

Recursive Document Processing for massive knowledge bases

16 · 8 min · 5/23/2026

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Massive Knowledge Processing

Processing 1 million documents is an Engineering Problem, not just an AI one. You need a robust pipeline that can handle failures, rate limits, and updates.

1. Async Ingestion Pipeline

Don't index documents in the UI thread. Use a **Background Worker** (Azure Function / Hangfire). Use a **Message Queue** to store document IDs. This allows you to retry individual documents if the embedding API is down or rate-limited.

2. Incremental Refresh

You don't want to re-index 1 million documents if only 1 document changed. Use **Hashes**. Before indexing, compare the hash of the current document to the one stored in your SQL DB. Only generate new embeddings if the hash is different.

4. Interview Mastery

Q: "How do you handle 'Large Document' RAG where the answer is scattered across 10 pages?"

Architect Answer: "We use a **Two-Stage Retrieval** or **Map-Reduce** pattern. First, we summarize each page/chunk. Then, we use the summaries to find the relevant chunks. Finally, we pass the *full* text of only those specific chunks to the model. This allows us to handle documents that are physically larger than the LLM's context window."

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AI & LLM Engineering for .NET Architects

On this page

1. Async Ingestion Pipeline 2. Incremental Refresh 4. Interview Mastery
1. AI Foundations & Prompt Engineering
The LLM Landscape: Transformers, Attention, and Tokens Advanced Prompt Engineering: Few-shot, Chain-of-Thought, and ReAct Prompt Versioning & Management in Production LLM Cost Estimation: Token accounting and budget strategies
2. Semantic Kernel & Integration
Introduction to Microsoft Semantic Kernel (SK) Skills & Plugins: Extending the LLM with native C# functions Planner & Orchestration: Automating complex multi-step AI tasks Connectors: Switching between OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and HuggingFace
3. Vector Databases & RAG
The RAG Pattern: Solving the 'Static Knowledge' problem Embeddings Deep Dive: Converting text to math Vector DBs: Azure AI Search vs Pinecode vs Milvus Hybrid Search: Combining Keyword and Semantic search for accuracy
4. Advanced RAG Techniques
Document Chunking Strategies: Overlap, Slidewindow, and Semantic splitting Recursive Document Processing for massive knowledge bases Context Window Management: Summarization vs Truncation Citations & Grounding: Ensuring the AI doesn't hallucinate
5. AI Safety & Guardrails
Content Moderation: Azure AI Content Safety integration Prompt Injection: Defending against adversarial attacks Punitiveness & Bias: Evaluating and mitigating model behavior Self-Correction Patterns: Letting the AI check its own work
6. Small Language Models (SLMs) & Local AI
The rise of SLMs: Phi-3, Llama-3-8B, and Mistral Running AI Locally with ONNX and LocalLLM Quantization: Running 70B models on 16GB RAM Edge AI: Deploying models to local devices and private clouds
7. Multimodal & Agentic AI
Multimodal AI: Processing Images, PDFs, and Audio in C# Agentic Workflows: Multi-agent collaboration with AutoGen Function Calling: Letting the LLM use your SQL and API tools Memory Management: Ephemeral vs Long-term Semantic memory
8. FAANG AI Engineer Interview
Case Study: Designing a Global Enterprise AI Knowledge Assistant Case Study: Building an Autonomous AI Agent for Software Dev