Create vs Update

[Alex_Davidovich]

Hello,

I want to understand the differences in performance between update and create.
I have a document that could be updated up to 4 times in my system. Is it making more sense
to only create new documents with a property that is responsible for letting me know which document is the most up to date?
Or should I just update 4 times? Asking from a performance perspective.
I only update 1 field in these 4 updates so this will be a partial update and not a whole document update.
In addition, Elasticsearch is NRT and my refresh interval is less 1 second. Can I update a document less than
1 second after I inserted it? Will it change the document in memory and store only the updated in the disk?

Thanks

[nik9000 (Nik Everett)]

@Alex_Davidovich

I only update 1 field in these 4 updates so this will be a partial update and not a whole document update.

This doesn't really matter. An update means marking the old document as deleted and indexing the document fresh.

@Alex_Davidovich

In addition, Elasticsearch is NRT and my refresh interval is less 1 second. Can I update a document less than 1 second after I inserted it? Will it change the document in memory and store only the updated in the disk?

Updates are consistent though updating a document before it has been refreshed is more costly because it has to force a refresh so it can fetch the document and update it. From that perspective I think it is better to just index the document "on top" of the old document. No refresh ought to be required though that is worth testing just to make sure.

[Alex_Davidovich]

@nik9000

updating a document before it has been refreshed is more costly because it has to force a refresh so it can fetch the d

Thank you.
So to sum up, update before a refresh is more costly than creation.
Update, in general, is also more costly?

[Christian_Dahlqvist]

Updating is more costly when indexing, but potentially a lot cheaper when querying as you do not need to identify the latest version.