Elasticsearch Optimization Tips
September 25, 2014
One of the Elasticsearch experts at Found shares some of his wisdom in “Optimizing Elasticsearch Searches.” Writer and open source enthusiast Alex Brasetvik emphasizes that Elasticsearch often offers several ways to approach a problem, and that his suggestions can lead to improved performance. The post begins with a look at the way the platform’s filters work:
“Understanding how filters work is essential to making searches faster. A lot of search optimization is really about how to use filters, where to place them and when to (not) cache them….
“This is the key property of filters: the result will be the same for all searches, hence the result of a filter can be cached and reused for subsequent searches. Caching them is quite cheap, as you can store them as a compact bitmap. When you search with filters that have been cached, you are essentially manipulating in-memory bitmaps – which is just about as fast as it can possibly get.
“A rule of thumb is to use filters when you can and queries when you must: when you need the actual scoring from the queries.”
Brasetvik goes on to elaborate on points such as effective filter usage, combining filters, acceleration filters, aggregation issues, scoring, and important Things to Avoid. The helpful post concludes with a list of further resources.
Cynthia Murrell, September 25, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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