PDF Ingestion Services in Unique Platform

The Unique platform supports multiple services for ingesting PDF documents:

• Default Unique Ingestion Service

• Docling

• Microsoft Document Intelligence (MDI in the following)

• MDI with Image Content Extraction

Each service can parse structured PDFs with a single-column layout and extract simple tables. However, their capabilities vary when handling more complex documents:

• Image-based PDFs: Scanned or printed PDFs lack structured content, requiring OCR techniques for extraction.

• Multi-Column Layout: PDFs with multiple columns, charts, tables, and text need pre-trained layout detection models to identify page elements and preserve logical content flow.

• Complex Tables Detection: Extracting tables with merged cells, missing borders, or checkmarks requires specialized AI models to recognize different table components.

• Image Content Extraction: Many PDFs contain unstructured visual elements like charts, logos, or photos. AI models with image-to-text capabilities are needed to extract this content in a searchable form.

• On-Prem Deployment: The service can operate in a closed environment without internet access.

General recommendation:

• On-Prem Customers: Use Docling for PDF ingestion, as the Default Unique Ingestion Service lacks efficient support for multi-column layouts.

• Cloud Customers: Use MDI as the default ingestion service, as it provides higher accuracy than Docling, particularly for tables without grid lines.

  • If PDFs contain charts or table-like structures, MDI with Image Content Extraction is recommended for making all document content searchable and accessible to language models.

- fully supported 🟡 - partially supported - not supported