1k rows isn't really at a point where you need any form of database. Vector or BOW, you can just bruteforce the search with such a miniscule amount of data (arguably this should be true into the low millions).
The problem is what happens when you have an additional 6 orders of magnitude of data, and the data itself is significantly larger than the system RAM, which is a very realistic case in a search engine.
The problem is what happens when you have an additional 6 orders of magnitude of data, and the data itself is significantly larger than the system RAM, which is a very realistic case in a search engine.