# Controlling position offset gap between properties of a JSON object **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [December 16, 2012, 10:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/controlling-position-offset-gap-between-properties-of-a-json-object/10084 "2012-12-16T22:40:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![roytmana](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/roytmana/32/44855_2.png) [@roytmana](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/roytmana)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 10:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/controlling-position-offset-gap-between-properties-of-a-json-object/10084/1 "2012-12-16T22:40:30Z")
Hello, I am new to ES and just started exploring it. One question I have is regarding \_all field indexing. Is there way to influence position offsets gap between properties of my JSON object when it is being rolled into \_all field similar to how array position\_offset\_gap flag functions? The reason I am asking is that I would like to score a hit on multiple terms in a single field higher than across multiple fields same way as a match on array element should score higher than across its elements. The reason I am trying to achieve it is because I am exploring different approaches to searching a highly structured JSON with fairly small (few words) individual field contents but very large number of fields and deeply nested 1-N relationships. Essentially it is JSON representation of a major business object in our system with couple hundreds fields many of them are 1-N and graph depth is sometimes 4-6 levels deep (it is attractive to index it as is so we can utilize the data stored in ES but I am not sure it is feasible and we may be better off having a special representation optimized for searching) I should say that the system is for unstructured searches (structured ones will be there as well but it is relatively simple once you know which field(s) you are searching on) where user does not exactly know what field may contain the data and would want not only find the data but which fields were matched. One complication is a large number of repetitive data which is coming from N-1 relations (i.e. Organization can be referenced several times within our business object with different purposes and additionally orgs are hierarchical so top portion of the org hierarchy is highly repetitive across business objects) which tells me that phrase auto suggest will be crucial especially if I can break it by field where the phrase can occur) If I take approach of searching \_all I need to inject as much "structure" in it as I can and as far as I understand the only way is by using offset gaps and then use phrase/span queries If I take approach of searching across all fields it might quickly become very slow (I have not tried this approach at all yet). - Anyone has experience of running complex queries against couple of hundreds of fields? - Will score calculation be meaningful? - And anyways what kind of queries can I run against couple of hundreds of small text fields? AND? SPAN? PHRASE? DIS\_MAX? Sorry for the lengthy post I will post my architectural/design questions separately 🙂 Thank you, Alex -- ---
**Author:** ![phill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/779978/32.png) [@phill](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/phill)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2013, 1:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/controlling-position-offset-gap-between-properties-of-a-json-object/10084/2 "2013-01-03T01:48:40Z")
Another old followup, but I'm assuming many people were on vacation over the Christmas and New Years holidays. On 12/16/2012 2:40 PM, AlexR wrote: > Hello, > > I am new to ES and just started exploring it. One question I have is > regarding \_all field indexing. Is there way to influence position > offsets gap between properties of my JSON object when it is being > rolled into \_all field similar to how array position\_offset\_gap flag > functions? The reason I am asking is that I would like to score a hit > on multiple terms in a single field higher than across multiple fields > same way as a match on array element should score higher than across > its elements. If you can't make the all field work, you might consider doing exactly what you suggest and create your own "allToSearch" field then put all the values you expect to search into an array in this field using an appropriate position\_offset\_gap, so that span queries work as you would like. If you don't use spans or phrases, playing with positions don't matter. > If I take approach of searching across all fields it might quickly > become very slow (I have not tried this approach at all yet). > > - Anyone has experience of running complex queries against couple of > hundreds of fields? You might be surprised how fast it is. > - Will score calculation be meaningful? Multifield scoring works great, because it based on formulas used in Lucene, but sometimes scoring can be surprising. > - And anyways what kind of queries can I run against couple of > hundreds of small text fields? AND? SPAN? PHRASE? DIS\_MAX? You'd have HUGE expressions listing all the various fields. > Sorry for the lengthy post I will post my architectural/design > questions separately 🙂 > > ## Thank you, Alex -- ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 2:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/controlling-position-offset-gap-between-properties-of-a-json-object/10084/3 "2017-07-06T02:57:59Z")