# Update By Query & Version Conflicts
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/update-by-query-version-conflicts/202054
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [October 2, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/update-by-query-version-conflicts/202054 "2019-10-02T21:06:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Chris\_White](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Chris_White)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/update-by-query-version-conflicts/202054/1 "2019-10-02T21:06:33Z")
I've just been stung by running an update-by-query where the Java Client API (High Level REST) has a query build method of setMaxRetries - but in fact update-by-query does not support retries - it's up to the developer to check the response for version conflicts count and manually re-run the update-by-query.
Ive found [this ticket](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/issues/22723) which notes:
> `_update_by_query` doesn't have a retry feature because it'd be fiddly to implement. I don't think it'd be impossible just time consuming to get right.
So is there a historic reason why UpdateByQuery doesn't override the AbstractBulkByScroll.setMaxRetries method to throw an IllegalArgumentException or something similar to hopefully warn developers during testing that this method has no effect for update-by-query?
Happy to create a ticket, but wanted to dig into it first.
(ES 7.1.0)
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### Author:  [@Chris\_White](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Chris_White)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2019, 3:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/update-by-query-version-conflicts/202054/2 "2019-10-07T15:59:46Z")
created a ticket due to lack of interest here: [https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/issues/47674](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/issues/47674)
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2019, 3:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/update-by-query-version-conflicts/202054/3 "2019-11-04T15:59:52Z")
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