Re-indexing considerations

The AR System server periodically optimizes FTSindexes after AR System requests are added, changed or deleted.
Most of the time, you need not rebuild FTSindexes. However, the following exceptions are applicable to on-premises deployments:

  • If you change your Ignore Words List, Root Word List or Thesaurus you must rebuild the FTS indexes (re-index). See How-FTS-indexing-works. 
    If you change your Ignore Words List, Root Word List or Thesaurus and you do not re-index then only the entries inserted, deleted, or modified after that time are affected. 
  • If you change the Case Sensitivity setting, you must rebuild the FTS indexes, and the re-indexing is started automatically when the change is saved.
  • Updates to entries for join, vendor, and view form types are not always generated in the same manner as regular forms. See Scheduling-FTS-indexing-scans-for-join-vendor-and-view-forms.

To rebuild the index for a specific field, you must clear the field for indexing on the Database Properties tab of the Field Properties window, save the change, reselect the field for indexing, and save the change.

Time required to rebuild a set of indexes

Best practice
We recommend that you perform bulk indexing during off-peak hours, such as during a maintenance window.

Do not rebuild indexes during normal production hours. Because re-indexing rebuilds your entire set of FTS indexes from scratch, it can take a long time, depending on the following factors:

  • The number of fields selected for full text search
  • The amount of data in each field indexed for FTS in each AR System request
  • The system load

For more information about locating your FTS indexes, see Estimating-the-size-of-the-FTS-index.

Re-indexing due to field and form property changes

To ensure that you re-index at the appropriate time for your environment, be aware of the following changes that result in field re-indexing:

  • For multiple-form FTS, when you change the name in the Title field, the new Title field is re-indexed for all existing entries. This updates the Title field values in the FTS index.
    If you remove the field name in the Title field, the field is re-indexed to remove the Title field values from the index.
    For more information, see Configuring-forms-for-multi-form-FTS.
  • When you add, remove, or change the Full Text MFS Category Name field property for a field, the field is re-indexed.
    For more information, see Defining-a-field-for-FTS.
  • If you change the Literal FTS Index field property for a field, the field is re-indexed.
  • If you change the Strips Tags For FTS field property for a field, the field is re-indexed.

(On-premises deployments) After modifying the Ignore Words List, Root Word List, or Thesaurus

When you modify the Ignore Words List, Root Word List, or Thesaurus and you do not re-index, your changes affect only entries inserted, deleted, or modified after that time.  For example, if you added network to the Ignore Words List, the FTS index ignores the word network only for AR System requests added or modified from this time forward. However, the FTS index with the word network would still exist for all requests created before the Ignore Words List was modified. When you re-index all the fields in all your forms that are currently flagged as indexed for FTS, you create a new FTS index that ignores the word network in all requests. 

If you modify Ignore Words List, Root Word List, or Thesaurus, you must restart the server for the changes to take effect.

To change the Ignore Words List, Root Word List, or Thesaurus, see Configuring-FTS-for-localization or Configuring-FTS-by-using-the-Server-Information-form. 

 

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