# Elastic Search as a primary data store

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [June 11, 2013, 5:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354 "2013-06-11T05:22:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dkullmann](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dkullmann/32/2283_2.png) [@dkullmann](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dkullmann)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2013, 5:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354/1 "2013-06-11T05:22:21Z")

</div>

Is there a reason to _not_ use ElasticSearch as a primary data store for an  
application?

Thanks  
DK

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**Author:** ![radu\_gheorghe](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/radu_gheorghe/32/556_2.png) [@radu\_gheorghe](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/radu_gheorghe)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354/2 "2013-06-14T20:42:00Z")

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Hi,

No. Although, to answer this properly, one would need more details on your  
use-case.

Generally, if you want to use ES anyway, it's a good idea to make it your  
only data store. Because there would be fewer moving pieces.  
On Jun 11, 2013 8:22 AM, "David Kullmann" [kullmann.david@gmail.com](mailto:kullmann.david@gmail.com) wrote:

> Is there a reason to _not_ use Elasticsearch as a primary data store for  
> an application?
> 
> Thanks  
> DK
> 
> --  
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**Author:** ![Fatima\_Castiglione\_M](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fatima_castiglione_m/32/2252_2.png) [@Fatima\_Castiglione\_M](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Fatima_Castiglione_M)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2013, 4:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354/3 "2013-06-15T04:40:47Z")

</div>

Interesting, really interesting.  
I am new to Elasticsearch (less than 1 month) but I am learning a lot in  
this list.

What I have seen on the web is that people are using CouchDB+Elasticsearch,  
or MongoDB+Elasticsearch, and they say that it is worth paying the price of  
more moving parts.

Why so?  
What is the difference between this options? I cannot see that clearly.  
May one of the really knowledgeable explain something about this?

Thanks in advance.

2013/6/14 Radu Gheorghe [radu.gheorghe@sematext.com](mailto:radu.gheorghe@sematext.com)

> Hi,
> 
> No. Although, to answer this properly, one would need more details on your  
> use-case.
> 
> Generally, if you want to use ES anyway, it's a good idea to make it your  
> only data store. Because there would be fewer moving pieces.  
> On Jun 11, 2013 8:22 AM, "David Kullmann" [kullmann.david@gmail.com](mailto:kullmann.david@gmail.com)  
> wrote:
> 
> > Is there a reason to _not_ use Elasticsearch as a primary data store for  
> > an application?
> > 
> > Thanks  
> > DK
> > 
> > --  
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups  
> > "elasticsearch" group.  
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an  
> > email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).  
> > For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out).
> 
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# --

Fátima Castiglione Maldonado  
[castiglionemaldonado@gmail.com](mailto:castiglionemaldonado@gmail.com)

```
                 ____
               ,'_ |

```

**_|||  
\< ) .------.  
 `-----------,------.-' ,-' `-.  
| | | ,' `. ,' | | ,' `.  
| ,-' |_ /   
 _,'-' `. `---._|**\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_   
.--' -----. | \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ `-. ----- | | ___| | | \ ,- \ | |___ | |===========================((|) | | | | | | _____________________ / `- / |  
`--._ -----' | _________________ ,-' ----- | `.-.\_ ,' \_\_.---' | /  
| `-. | \ / `. | | `. ,' | | | `. ,'  
\_\_\_\_\_,----------`-------`-. `-._ _,-' < ___________________________ ) `------'  
| _| |  
`._\_\_\_|

=================================

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**Author:** ![James\_Ford](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e0b2c6/32.png) [@James\_Ford](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/James_Ford)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2013, 7:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354/4 "2013-06-15T07:23:53Z")

</div>

I have experience using ElasticSearch as primary DataStore for my public website. I have had no issues what so ever. Had some problems with real-time availability but by refreshing at certain points I was able to come around this issue.

/James

---

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**Author:** ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2013, 10:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354/5 "2013-06-15T10:28:23Z")

</div>

The answer depends.

Although Elasticsearch is not a store but an index, it can be used as a  
store, for many use cases. Without defining the use case, it is  
impossible to give a solid answer.

If you examine the techology stacks of CouchDB, MongoDB, Elasticsearch,  
you will find what you need to know for your personal decision because  
only you know best what data you have and how you want them to get  
processed.

Maybe it helps to rethink the question about "primary data store" a  
little bit. With primary data store, many people associate a SPOF where  
all the writes go to first, often cotnrolled by transactional  
operations. Such a SPOF does not exist in ES at all.

These questions may help to get a bigger picture. CouchDB, MongoDB,  
Elasticsearch give all different answers to them.

- do you want to use Lucene features? Analyzers? Facets?

- do you want scalable indexing and search with shards and replicas?

- do you have full-text documents, or data in hierarchical trees, or  
graph nodes?

- do you want polyglot persistence? do you want to use data persistence?  
Or object persistence?

- do you want multi tenancy? Does each client bring his own data and  
method/technlogy of indexing/searching?

- do you have fast moving small pieces of data? do you want fast writes  
(updates)? Can you rebuild indexes often, can you incrementally push  
updates? Do you modify whole indexes or single documents or values in  
fields of a document?

- do you need robust backup/restore?

- and much more (e.g. ease of setup/configuration, ease of  
administration, ease of scaling, ...)

To sum up some limits of ES, there is no support for participating in  
transcactional operations, writes are much slower than reads, and there  
is no support for large streaming content and blobs because it is built  
on JSON and HTTP REST (some people want to store some binary GB sized  
blobs in a single field which is rarely a suitable use case for a search  
engine).

Jörg

Am 15.06.13 06:40, schrieb Fatima Castiglione Maldonado 发:

> Interesting, really interesting.  
> I am new to Elasticsearch (less than 1 month) but I am learning a lot  
> in this list.
> 
> What I have seen on the web is that people are using  
> CouchDB+Elasticsearch, or MongoDB+Elasticsearch, and they say that it  
> is worth paying the price of more moving parts.
> 
> Why so?

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**Author:** ![Fatima\_Castiglione\_M](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fatima_castiglione_m/32/2252_2.png) [@Fatima\_Castiglione\_M](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Fatima_Castiglione_M)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2013, 10:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354/6 "2013-06-15T10:37:48Z")

</div>

Oh, thanks.  
Very good questions.

2013/6/15 Jörg Prante [joergprante@gmail.com](mailto:joergprante@gmail.com)

> The answer depends.
> 
> Although Elasticsearch is not a store but an index, it can be used as a  
> store, for many use cases. Without defining the use case, it is impossible  
> to give a solid answer.
> 
> If you examine the techology stacks of CouchDB, MongoDB, Elasticsearch,  
> you will find what you need to know for your personal decision because only  
> you know best what data you have and how you want them to get processed.
> 
> Maybe it helps to rethink the question about "primary data store" a little  
> bit. With primary data store, many people associate a SPOF where all the  
> writes go to first, often cotnrolled by transactional operations. Such a  
> SPOF does not exist in ES at all.
> 
> These questions may help to get a bigger picture. CouchDB, MongoDB,  
> Elasticsearch give all different answers to them.
> 
> - do you want to use Lucene features? Analyzers? Facets?
> 
> - do you want scalable indexing and search with shards and replicas?
> 
> - do you have full-text documents, or data in hierarchical trees, or graph  
> nodes?
> 
> - do you want polyglot persistence? do you want to use data persistence?  
> Or object persistence?
> 
> - do you want multi tenancy? Does each client bring his own data and  
> method/technlogy of indexing/searching?
> 
> - do you have fast moving small pieces of data? do you want fast writes  
> (updates)? Can you rebuild indexes often, can you incrementally push  
> updates? Do you modify whole indexes or single documents or values in  
> fields of a document?
> 
> - do you need robust backup/restore?
> 
> - and much more (e.g. ease of setup/configuration, ease of administration,  
> ease of scaling, ...)
> 
> To sum up some limits of ES, there is no support for participating in  
> transcactional operations, writes are much slower than reads, and there is  
> no support for large streaming content and blobs because it is built on  
> JSON and HTTP REST (some people want to store some binary GB sized blobs in  
> a single field which is rarely a suitable use case for a search engine).
> 
> Jörg
> 
> Am 15.06.13 06:40, schrieb Fatima Castiglione Maldonado 发:
> 
> > Interesting, really interesting.  
> > I am new to Elasticsearch (less than 1 month) but I am learning a lot in  
> > this list.
> > 
> > What I have seen on the web is that people are using  
> > CouchDB+Elasticsearch, or MongoDB+Elasticsearch, and they say that it is  
> > worth paying the price of more moving parts.
> > 
> > Why so?
> 
> --  
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups  
> "elasticsearch" group.  
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an  
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> .

# --

Fátima Castiglione Maldonado  
[castiglionemaldonado@gmail.com](mailto:castiglionemaldonado@gmail.com)

```
                 ____
               ,'_ |

```

**_|||  
\< ) .------.  
 `-----------,------.-' ,-' `-.  
| | | ,' `. ,' | | ,' `.  
| ,-' |_ /   
 _,'-' `. `---._|**\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_   
.--' -----. | \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ `-. ----- | | ___| | | \ ,- \ | |___ | |===========================((|) | | | | | | _____________________ / `- / |  
`--._ -----' | _________________ ,-' ----- | `.-.\_ ,' \_\_.---' | /  
| `-. | \ / `. | | `. ,' | | | `. ,'  
\_\_\_\_\_,----------`-------`-. `-._ _,-' < ___________________________ ) `------'  
| _| |  
`._\_\_\_|

=================================

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**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, 2:31am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-as-a-primary-data-store/12354/7 "2017-07-06T02:31:05Z")

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