Indexes: Creating and Deploying Indexes

There are a couple of ways to create a static index and send it to the server. We can use maintenance operations or create a custom class.

Using AbstractCsharpIndexCreationTask

AbstractCsharpIndexCreationTask lets you avoid hard-coding index names in every query.

Naming Convention

There is only one naming convention: each _ in the class name will be translated to / in the index name.

e.g.

In the Northwind samples, there is a index called Orders/Totals. To get such index name, we need to create a class called Orders_Totals.

class Orders_Totals extends AbstractCsharpIndexCreationTask {
    /// ...
}

Sending to Server

There is not much use from an index if it is not deployed to the server. To do so, we need to create an instance of our class that inherits from AbstractIndexCreationTask and use execute method.

// deploy index to database defined in `DocumentStore.getDatabase` method
// using default DocumentStore `conventions`
await new Orders_Totals().execute(store);

// deploy index to `Northwind` database
// using default DocumentStore `conventions`
await new Orders_Totals().execute(store, store.conventions, "Northwind");

Creating an Index with Custom Configuration

If you need to create an index with a custom index configuration you can set them in the index class constructor like so:

class Orders_Totals extends AbstractCsharpIndexCreationTask {
    constructor() {
        super();
        // ...
        this.configuration = indexConfig;
    }

}

Using IndexCreation

All classes that inherit from AbstractIndexCreationTask can be deployed at once using one of IndexCreation.createIndexes method overloads.

await IndexCreation.createIndexes([new Orders_Totals()], store);

Underneath, the IndexCreation will attempt to create all indexes in a single request. If it fails, then it will repeat the execution by calling the execute method one-by-one for each of the found indexes in separate requests.

Example

class Orders_Totals extends AbstractCsharpIndexCreationTask {

    constructor() {
        super();
        this.map = "docs.Orders.Select(order => new { " +
            "    Employee = order.Employee, " +
            "    Company = order.Company, " +
            "    Total = Enumerable.Sum(order.Lines, l => ((decimal)((((decimal) l.Quantity) * l.PricePerUnit) * (1M - l.Discount)))) " +
            "})";
    }

}

async function main() {
    store.initialize();

    const ordersTotalsIndex = new Orders_Totals();
    await ordersTotalsIndex.execute(store);

    {
        const session = store.openSession();
        const orders = await session
            .query({ indexName: ordersTotalsIndex.getIndexName() })
            .whereGreaterThan("Total", 100)
            .ofType(Order)
            .all();
    }
}

Using Maintenance Operations

The PutIndexesOperation maintenance operation (which API references can be found here) can be used also to send index(es) to the server.

The benefit of this approach is that you can choose the name as you feel fit, and change various settings available in IndexDefinition. You will have to use string-based names of indexes when querying.

const indexDefinition = new IndexDefinition();
indexDefinition.name = "Orders/Totals";
indexDefinition.maps = new Set([
    "from order in docs.Orders " +
    " select new " +
    " { " +
    "    order.Employee, " +
    "    order.Company, " +
    "    Total = order.Lines.Sum(l => (l.Quantity * l.PricePerUnit) * (1 - l.Discount)) " +
    "}" 
]);

await store.maintenance.send(new PutIndexesOperation(indexDefinition));

IndexDefinitionBuilder

IndexDefinitionBuilder is a very useful class that enables you to create IndexDefinitions using strongly-typed syntax with access to low-level settings not available when the AbstractIndexCreationTask approach is used.

let builder = new IndexDefinitionBuilder();
builder.map = `docs.Order.select(order => new {    
                            Employee = order.Employee,    
                            Company = order.Company,
                            Total = order.Lines.Sum(l => (l.Quantity * l.PricePerUnit) * (1 - l.Discount)
                        })`;

await store.maintenance.send(new PutIndexesOperation(builder.toIndexDefinition(store.conventions)));

Remarks

Auto-indexes are created when queries that do not specify an index name are executed and, after in-depth query analysis, no matching AUTO index is found on the server-side.

Naming Convention

Auto-indexes can be recognized by the Auto/ prefix in their name. Their name also contains the name of a collection that was queried, and list of fields that were required to find valid query results.

For instance, issuing a query like this

const employees = await session
    .query(Employee)
    .whereEquals("FirstName", "Robert")
    .andAlso()
    .whereEquals("LastName", "King")
    .all();

from Employees
where FirstName = 'Robert' and LastName = 'King'

will result in a creation of a index named Auto/Employees/ByFirstNameAndLastName.

Auto Indexes and Indexing State

To reduce the server load, if auto-indexes are not queried for a certain amount of time defined in Indexing.TimeToWaitBeforeMarkingAutoIndexAsIdleInMin setting (30 minutes by default), then they will be marked as Idle. You can read more about the implications of marking index as Idle here.

Setting this configuration option to a high value may result in performance degradation due to the possibility of having a high amount of unnecessary work that is all redundant and not needed by indexes to perform. This is not a recommended configuration.

• Indexes process data assigned to them as the data changes. For example, if changes are made in the collection "Orders", the indexes that are defined to handle queries on "Orders" will be triggered to update.
• These processes utilize machine resources.
  If indexing drains system resources, it usually means that either they were defined in a way that causes inefficient processing, or that your license, cloud instance or hardware must be optimized to satisfy your usage needs.