BUILD INDEX

reference

The BUILD INDEX statement enables you to build one or more GSI indexes that are marked for deferred building all at once.

By default, CREATE INDEX starts building the created index after the creation stage is complete. However for more efficient building of multiple indexes, CREATE INDEX can mark indexes for deferred building using the defer_build:true option. BUILD INDEX is capable of building multiple indexes at once, and can utilize a single scan of documents in the keyspace to feed many index build operations.

BUILD INDEX is an asynchronous operation. BUILD INDEX creates a task to build the primary or secondary GSI indexes and returns as soon as the task is queued for execution. The full index build operation happens in the background.

Index metadata provides a state field. The index state may be scheduled for creation, deferred, building, pending, online, offline, or abridged. This state field and other index metadata can be queried using system:indexes. You can also monitor the index state using the Couchbase Web Console.

If you attempt to build an index which is still scheduled for background creation, the request fails.

If you kick off multiple index build operations concurrently, then you may sometimes see transient errors similar to the following.

[
  {
    "code": 5000,
    "msg": "GSI CreateIndex() - cause: Encountered transient error.  Index creation will be retried in background.  Error: Index ... will retry building in the background for reason: Build Already In Progress. Keyspace ...",
    "query": "..."
  }
]

To work around this issue, wait for index building to complete (that is, for all indexes to get to the online state), then issue the BUILD INDEX command again.

BUILD INDEX is also idempotent. On execution, the statement only builds indexes which have not already been built. If any of the indexes specified by BUILD INDEX have already been built, BUILD INDEX skips those indexes.

When building an index which has automatic index replicas, all of the replicas are also built as part of the BUILD INDEX statement, without having to manually specify them.

Prerequisites

RBAC Privileges

User executing the BUILD INDEX statement must have the Query Manage Index privilege granted on the keyspace. For more details about user roles, see Authorization.

Syntax

build-index ::= 'BUILD' 'INDEX' 'ON' keyspace-ref '(' index-term (',' index-term)* ')'
                index-using?

keyspace-ref: (Required) Specifies the keyspace where the indexes are built. Refer to Keyspace Reference below.
index-term: (Required) Specifies the indexes to build. Refer to Index Term below.
index-using: (Optional) Specifies the index type. Refer to USING Clause below.

Keyspace Reference

keyspace-ref ::= keyspace-path | keyspace-partial

keyspace-path ::= ( namespace ':' )? bucket ( '.' scope '.' collection )?

keyspace-partial ::= collection

The simple name or fully-qualified name of the keyspace on which to build the index. Refer to the CREATE INDEX statement for details of the syntax.

Index Term

index-term ::= index-name | index-expr | subquery-expr

You can specify one index term, or multiple index terms separated by commas. An index term must be specified for each index to be built.

In Couchbase Server 6.5 and later, each index term may be an index name, an index expression, or a subquery expression. The BUILD INDEX clause may contain a mixture of the different types of index term.

Index Name

index-name ::= identifier

An identifier that refers to the name of an index.

BUILD INDEX ON keyspace(ix1, ix2, ix3);

Index Expression

index-expr ::= string | array

An expression that may be a string, or an array of strings, each referring to the name of an index.

BUILD INDEX ON keyspace('ix1', 'ix2', 'ix3');
BUILD INDEX ON keyspace(['ix1', 'ix2', 'ix3']);
BUILD INDEX ON keyspace('ix1', ['ix2', 'ix3'], ['ix4']);

Arrays of identifiers are not permitted.

BUILD INDEX ON keyspace([ix1, ix2, ix3]);
BUILD INDEX ON keyspace([ix1], [ix2, ix3]);

Subquery Expression

subquery-expr ::= '(' select ')'

Use parentheses to specify a subquery.

The subquery must return an array of strings, each string representing the name of an index. See Example 4 for details.

For more details and examples, see SELECT Clause and Subqueries.

USING Clause

index-using ::= 'USING' 'GSI'

The index type for a deferred index build must be Global Secondary Index (GSI). The USING GSI keywords are optional and may be omitted.

Examples

To try the examples in this section, set the query context to the inventory scope in the travel sample dataset. For more information, see Query Context.

Example 1. Create deferred indexes

Create a set of primary and secondary indexes in the landmark keyspace with the defer_build option.

CREATE INDEX idx_landmark_country
  ON landmark(country)
  USING GSI
  WITH {"defer_build":true};

CREATE INDEX idx_landmark_name 
  ON landmark(name)
  USING GSI
  WITH {"defer_build":true};

CREATE PRIMARY INDEX idx_landmark_primary
  ON landmark
  USING GSI
  WITH {"defer_build":true};

Example 2. Check deferred index status

Query system:indexes for the status of an index.

SELECT * FROM system:indexes WHERE name="idx_landmark_country";

Results

[
  {
    "indexes": {
      "bucket_id": "travel-sample",
      "datastore_id": "http://127.0.0.1:8091",
      "id": "d079aec40eb0c6cc",
      "index_key": [
        "`country`"
      ],
      "keyspace_id": "landmark",
      "name": "idx_landmark_country",
      "namespace_id": "default",
      "scope_id": "inventory",
      "state": "deferred", (1)
      "using": "gsi"
    }
  }
]

1	Note that the index is in the deferred state.

Example 3. Build a named index

Kick off a deferred build using the index name.

BUILD INDEX ON landmark(idx_landmark_country) USING GSI;

Example 4. Build all indexes

Alternatively, kick off all deferred builds in the keyspace, using a subquery to find the deferred builds.

BUILD INDEX ON landmark (( (1)
  SELECT RAW name (2)
  FROM system:indexes
  WHERE keyspace_id = 'landmark'
    AND scope_id = 'inventory'
    AND bucket_id = 'travel-sample'
    AND state = 'deferred' ));

1	One set of parentheses delimits the whole group of index terms, and another set of parentheses delimits the subquery. In this case there is a double set of parentheses, as the subquery is the only index term.
2	The `RAW` keyword forces the subquery to return a flattened array of strings, each of which refers to an index name.

Note that it is only possible to kick off all deferred builds in a single collection — it is not possible to kick off all deferred builds in all collections in all scopes within a bucket.

Example 5. Check online index status

Query system:indexes for the status of an index.

SELECT * FROM system:indexes WHERE name="idx_landmark_country";

Results

[
  {
    "indexes": {
      "bucket_id": "travel-sample",
      "datastore_id": "http://127.0.0.1:8091",
      "id": "d079aec40eb0c6cc",
      "index_key": [
        "`country`"
      ],
      "keyspace_id": "landmark",
      "name": "idx_landmark_country",
      "namespace_id": "default",
      "scope_id": "inventory",
      "state": "online", (1)
      "using": "gsi"
    }
  }
]

1	Note that the index has now been created.