# Indexing and Querying on multi-valued field (type String)

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-and-querying-on-multi-valued-field-type-string/55035>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [July 8, 2016, 9:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-and-querying-on-multi-valued-field-type-string/55035 "2016-07-08T09:32:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![NouhaPhD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/nouhaphd/32/9566_2.png) [@NouhaPhD](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/NouhaPhD)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 9:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-and-querying-on-multi-valued-field-type-string/55035/1 "2016-07-08T09:32:24Z")

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Hello !!

I am using match query (“type”:phrase”) to search documents that contain “mutivalues” fields (type:String).  
The number of possible distinct values is around 30000 values. Our index has ~40 million documents (with \_source). Elasticsearch v 1.7.5. The index has 5 shards (1 node for now). The node has ~8GB of RAM with 4GB set  
to ES's JVM.

My questions:

(1) Is it feasible to search on such a field? I'm wondering if a field with that many values won't fit in memory (\<4GB).

(2) How to store them? Should I consider these values as strings or integers

Any Help?

Thanks!!

Nouha.

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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 5, 2017, 10:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/indexing-and-querying-on-multi-valued-field-type-string/55035/2 "2017-07-05T22:37:07Z")

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