| name | zava-act3-ai |
| description | Act 3 of the Zava Lending Hyperscale workshop — The Engine Knows: native vector search + in-database AI loan scoring. USE WHEN the user wants to run "Act 3", "the AI act", build embeddings / DiskANN vector index / hybrid Narrative Search / Phi-4 AI Loan Scoring, run the ai/build and ai/walkthrough scripts, or do the OPTIONAL loan-scoring agent (Data API Builder + SQL MCP server + Microsoft Foundry agent, plus the bonus publish-to-Teams exercise) and the OPTIONAL APIM AI gateway. Guides ai/build/sql 00→04 then ai/walkthrough. |
Act 3 — The Engine Knows (Vector Search + AI Scoring)
Add AI to the existing Hyperscale ZavaLendingDB — natively in Azure SQL. Built on the Act 1
database; Act 2 scale is not required. Narrative: ai/README.md.
Prerequisites
- A populated
ZavaLendingDB on Hyperscale (from Act 1).
- An Azure AI (Azure OpenAI) resource with
text-embedding-3-large and Phi-4
deployed. Scripts use placeholders (<your-ai-account>, <your-azure-ai-api-key>) — replace
with your own; the credential + external model are defined in sql/01-embeddings-setup.sql.
- Detail: ai/build/README.md.
Step 1 — Build the AI objects (run in order)
Folder: ai/build/sql/.
00-add-loan-narratives.sql — narrative text + full-text catalog (the bridge step).01-embeddings-setup.sql — master key, credential, CREATE EXTERNAL MODEL, embeddings via AI_GENERATE_EMBEDDINGS.02-vector-index.sql — the DiskANN CREATE VECTOR INDEX.03-hybrid-search-procedure.sql — usp_HybridLoanSearch (powers Narrative Search).04-loan-scoring.sql — usp_ScoreLoanApplication: vector search + Phi-4 scoring via sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint (powers AI Loan Scoring). Calls Azure AI directly by default (@UseGateway = 0).
Step 2 — Walk through the capabilities
Folder: ai/walkthrough/sql/. See
ai/walkthrough/README.md.
00-reset.sql — reset to a clean demo state.03-vector-search-replica.sql — run Narrative Search, optionally on the Analytics named replica.04-dml-insert-search.sql — DML on vector-indexed tables.05-legacy-vs-new.sql — legacy VECTOR_DISTANCE vs TOP (N) WITH APPROXIMATE.07-execute-scoring.sql — execute usp_ScoreLoanApplication.
Optional — APIM AI gateway (off by default)
Not required. Default is direct-to-Foundry (@UseGateway = 0). To route the scoring call
through an APIM gateway (token metering, content safety, throttling), set @UseGateway = 1 and
use ai/build/APIM/. To skip it, substitute your own Foundry model URL
in the direct branch. Content safety on the agent path comes from Azure AI Foundry's built-in
filters — it does not require APIM.
Optional — loan-scoring agent (DAB + SQL MCP server + Foundry agent)
Not required to complete Act 3. Expose the same usp_ScoreLoanApplication as an MCP tool via
Data API Builder, host it on Azure Container Apps, and drive it from a Microsoft
Foundry agent. Deploy from
ai/build/loan-scoring-agent/; set up and use it via
ai/walkthrough/loan-scoring-agent/
(foundry-agent-setup.md).
Bonus exercise: publish the deployed Foundry agent as a Microsoft Teams app — see the
Bonus exercise section of foundry-agent-setup.md.
Result
ZavaLendingDB now does semantic Narrative Search and in-database AI Loan Scoring in
T-SQL — the same engine, one SQL surface, optionally reachable by any AI agent through MCP.
