⪢ Adding data from tables

Merging two existing plain tables can be more efficient than indexing the data from scratch and might be desired in some cases (such as merging 'main' and 'delta' tables instead of simply rebuilding 'main' in the 'main+delta' partitioning scheme). Thus,indexer provides an option to do that. Merging tables is typically faster than rebuilding, but still not instant for huge tables. Essentially, it needs to read the contents of both tables once and write the result once. Merging a 100 GB and 1 GB table, for example, will result in 202 GB of I/O (but that's still likely less than indexing from scratch requires).

The basic command syntax is as follows:

sudo -u manticore indexer --merge DSTINDEX SRCINDEX [--rotate] [--drop-src]

Unless --drop-src is specified, only the DSTINDEX table will be affected: the contents of SRCINDEX will be merged into it.

The --rotate switch is required if DSTINDEX is already being served by searchd.

The typical usage pattern is to merge a smaller update from SRCINDEX into DSTINDEX. Thus, when merging attributes, the values from SRCINDEX will take precedence if duplicate document IDs are encountered. However, note that the "old" keywords will not be automatically removed in such cases. For example, if there's a keyword "old" associated with document 123 in DSTINDEX, and a keyword "new" associated with it in SRCINDEX, document 123 will be found by both keywords after the merge. You can supply an explicit condition to remove documents from DSTINDEX to mitigate this; the relevant switch is --merge-dst-range:

sudo -u manticore indexer --merge main delta --merge-dst-range deleted 0 0

This switch allows you to apply filters to the destination table along with merging. There can be several filters; all of their conditions must be met in order to include the document in the resulting merged table. In the example above, the filter passes only those records where 'deleted' is 0, eliminating all records that were flagged as deleted.

--drop-src enables dropping SRCINDEX after the merge and before rotating the tables, which is important if you specify DSTINDEX in killlist_target of DSTINDEX. Otherwise, when rotating the tables, the documents that have been merged into DSTINDEX may be suppressed by SRCINDEX.

Adding data from tables Killlists in plain tables

When using plain tables, there's a challenge arising from the need to have the data in the table as fresh as possible.

In this case, one or more secondary (also known as delta) tables are used to capture the modified data between the time the main table was created and the current time. The modified data can include new, updated, or deleted documents. The search becomes a search over the main table and the delta table. This works seamlessly when you just add new documents to the delta table, but when it comes to updated or deleted documents, there remains the following issue.

If a document is present in both the main and delta tables, it can cause issues during searching, as the engine will see two versions of a document and won't know how to pick the right one. So, the delta needs to somehow inform the search that there are deleted documents in the main table that should be disregarded. This is where kill lists come in.

A table can maintain a list of document IDs that can be used to suppress records in other tables. This feature is available for plain tables using database sources or plain tables using XML sources. In the case of database sources, the source needs to provide an additional query defined by sql_query_killlist. It will store in the table a list of documents that can be used by the server to remove documents from other plain tables.

This query is expected to return a number of 1-column rows, each containing just the document ID.

In many cases, the query is a union between a query that retrieves a list of updated documents and a list of deleted documents, e.g.:

sql_query_killlist = \
    SELECT id FROM documents WHERE updated_ts>=@last_reindex UNION \
    SELECT id FROM documents_deleted WHERE deleted_ts>=@last_reindex

A plain table can contain a directive called killlist_target that will tell the server it can provide a list of document IDs that should be removed from certain existing tables. The table can use either its document IDs as the source for this list or provide a separate list.

Sets the table(s) that the kill-list will be applied to. Optional, default value is empty.

When you use plain tables you often need to maintain not just a single table, but a set of them to be able to add/update/delete new documents sooner (read about delta table updates). n order to suppress matches in the previous (main) table that were updated or deleted in the next (delta) table, you need to:

Create a kill-list in the delta table using sql_query_killlist
Specify main table as killlist_target in delta table settings:

‹›

CONFIG

CONFIG

📋

table products {
  killlist_target = main:kl

  path = products
  source = src_base
}

When killlist_target is specified, the kill-list is applied to all the tables listed in it on searchd startup. If any of the tables from killlist_target are rotated, the kill-list is reapplied to these tables. When the kill-list is applied, tables that were affected save these changes to disk.

killlist_target has 3 modes of operation:

killlist_target = main:kl. Document IDs from the kill-list of the delta table are suppressed in the main table (see sql_query_killlist).
killlist_target = main:id. All document IDs from the delta table are suppressed in the main table. The kill-list is ignored.
killlist_target = main. Both document IDs from the delta table and its kill-list are suppressed in the main table.

Multiple targets can be specified, separated by commas like:

killlist_target = table_one:kl,table_two:kl

You can change the killlist_target settings for a table without rebuilding it by using ALTER.

However, since the 'old' main table has already written the changes to disk, the documents that were deleted in it will remain deleted even if it is no longer in the killlist_target of the delta table.

‹›

SQL
HTTP

📋

ALTER TABLE delta KILLLIST_TARGET='new_main_table:kl'

Merging tables Attaching one table to another

A plain table can be converted into a real-time table or added to an existing real-time table.

The first case is useful when you need to regenerate a real-time table completely, which may be needed, for example, if tokenization settings need an update. In this situation, preparing a plain table and converting it into a real-time table may be easier than preparing a batch job to perform INSERTs for adding all the data into a real-time table.

In the second case, you normally want to add a large bulk of new data to a real-time table, and again, creating a plain table with that data is easier than populating the existing real-time table.

You can also attach an existing real-time table to another one.

The ATTACH statement allows you to convert a plain table to be attached to an existing real-time table. It also enables you to attach the content of one real-time table to another real-time table.

ATTACH TABLE plain_or_rt_table TO TABLE rt_table [WITH TRUNCATE]

After a successful ATTACH the data originally stored in the source plain table becomes a part of the target RT table, and the source plain table becomes unavailable (until the next rebuild). If the source table is an RT table, its content is moved into the destination RT table, and the source RT table remains empty. ATTACH does not result in any table data changes. Essentially, it just renames the files (making the source table a new disk chunk of the target RT table) and updates the metadata. So it is generally a quick operation that might (frequently) complete as fast as under a second.

Note that when a table is attached to an empty RT table, the fields, attributes, and text processing settings (tokenizer, wordforms, etc.) from the source table are copied over and take effect. The respective parts of the RT table definition from the configuration file will be ignored.

When the TRUNCATE option is used, the RT table gets truncated prior to attaching the source plain table. This allows the operation to be atomic or ensures that the attached source plain table will be the only data in the target RT table.

ATTACH TABLE comes with a number of restrictions. Most notably, the target RT table is currently required to be either empty or have the same settings as the source table. In case the source table gets attached to a non-empty RT table, the RT table data collected so far gets stored as a regular disk chunk, and the table being attached becomes the newest disk chunk, with documents having the same IDs getting killed. The complete list of restrictions is as follows:

The target RT table needs to be either empty or have the same settings as the source table.
The source table needs to have phrase_boundary_step set to 0 and stopword_step set to 1.

‹›

Example

Example

📋

Before the ATTACH, the RT table is empty and has 3 fields:

mysql> DESC rt;
Empty set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM rt;
+-----------+---------+
| Field     | Type    |
+-----------+---------+
| id        | integer |
| testfield | field   |
| testattr  | uint    |
+-----------+---------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The plain table is not empty:

mysql> SELECT * FROM plain WHERE MATCH('test');
+------+--------+----------+------------+
| id   | weight | group_id | date_added |
+------+--------+----------+------------+
|    1 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
|    2 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
|    3 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
|    4 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
+------+--------+----------+------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Attaching the plain table to the RT table:

mysql> ATTACH TABLE plain TO TABLE rt;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

The RT table now has 5 fields:

mysql> DESC rt;
+------------+-----------+
| Field      | Type      |
+------------+-----------+
| id         | integer   |
| title      | field     |
| content    | field     |
| group_id   | uint      |
| date_added | timestamp |
+------------+-----------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

And it's not empty:

mysql> SELECT * FROM rt WHERE MATCH('test');
+------+--------+----------+------------+
| id   | weight | group_id | date_added |
+------+--------+----------+------------+
|    1 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
|    2 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
|    3 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
|    4 |   1304 |        1 | 1313643256 |
+------+--------+----------+------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

After the ATTACH, the plain table is removed and no longer available for searching:

mysql> SELECT * FROM plain WHERE MATCH('test');
ERROR 1064 (42000): no enabled local indexes to search

Killlists in plain tables Importing RT table

⪢ Adding data from tables

Merging tables

Killlist in plain tables

Table kill-list

Removing documents in a plain table

killlist_target

Attaching one table to another

Attaching table - general syntax