# How to absorb a lot of incremental partial updates efficiently on a denormalized record?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-absorb-a-lot-of-incremental-partial-updates-efficiently-on-a-denormalized-record/16043>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 26, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-absorb-a-lot-of-incremental-partial-updates-efficiently-on-a-denormalized-record/16043 "2014-02-26T21:31:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![george\_monroe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bbce88/32.png) [@george\_monroe](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/george_monroe)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-absorb-a-lot-of-incremental-partial-updates-efficiently-on-a-denormalized-record/16043/1 "2014-02-26T21:31:38Z")

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Guys,

I'm evaluating a denormalized data structure in ES that basically looks  
like a Customer record with a lot of transactions with dollar amounts and  
dates. It roughly looks like this:

{ "id": 123,  
"name": "Gavin",  
...  
"transactions": {  
"txn\_uid\_1" : { "date" : "02-19-2013", "amount" : $19.99 },  
"txn\_uid\_2" : { "date" : "02-20-2013", "amount" : $23.00 }, ...  
"txn\_uid\_N" : { "date" : "02-21-2013", "amount" : $99.99}  
}  
}

The transactions in particular can be coming in quite frequently and in a  
batch. I would like to be able to change the document using a batch of  
partial updates carrying the changes to the same document. But since the  
overall document can be quite beefy (customer name, characteristics, etc.)  
I would like to avoid the re-indexing of the same document per single  
partial update. I would like to be able to turn off ES indexing, apply the  
batch hoping the batch will be merged in the transaction log, and turn  
indexing back on, hoping the total end result change will be re-indexed.  
Is this not possible? If not, what is the best way to solve this type of  
use case? Would you normalize the data structure into a parent Customer  
with children etc??

How efficiently can ES handle many partial updates to the same document if  
the document is say a few pages long with 20-30 different fields some of  
which are multi-valued arrays?

Thanks so much for your input!!

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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, 1:47am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-absorb-a-lot-of-incremental-partial-updates-efficiently-on-a-denormalized-record/16043/2 "2017-07-06T01:47:02Z")

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