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Static indexes
As we explained earlier in this chapter, RavenDB uses indexes to satisfy queries. Whenever a user issues a query RavenDB will use an existing index or create a new one if no matching index was found.
RavenDB also allows you to manually define indexes, and also to query on them explicitly. Such manually created indexes are called static indexes.
There are a few reasons why to prefer static indexes over dynamically created ones:
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High latency - Index creation is not a cheap process, and may take a while to execute. Since dynamic indexes are created on the fly on first user query, first non-stale results may take a long time to return. Since dynamic indexes are created as temporary indexes, this is going to be a performance issue on first run.
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Flexibility - Static indexes expose much more functionality, like custom sorting, boosting, Full Text Search, Live Projections, spatial search support, and more.
While dynamic indexes are very easy to work with, static indexes are much more useful and more efficient in indexing data in real time. Therefore, we recommend to base most operations in an application on static indexes, or at least ensure the temporary indexes created by dynamic indexing have been promoted to permanent indexes.
Querying static indexes is no different than what we have seen by now. Whenever you execute a query against RavenDB and an appropriate static index exists, RavenDB will direct your query to that index automatically. You can also specify the index name explicitly, like so:
var results = session.Query<BlogPost>("MyBlogPostsIndex").ToArray();Note
RavenDB will throw if an explicit index name was used, when no such index exists.
In this chapter we will learn how to create static indexes, and explore the various capabilities they offer.