The CREATE INDEX statement allows you to create a secondary index. Secondary indexes contain a filtered or a full set of keys in a given keyspace. Secondary indexes are optional but increase query efficiency on a keyspace.

CREATE INDEX allows you to make multiple concurrent index creation requests. The command starts a task to create the index definition in the background. If there is an index creation task already running, the Index Service queues the incoming index creation request. CREATE INDEX returns as soon as the index creation phase is complete.

By default, when the index creation phase is complete, the Index Service triggers the index build phase. If you lose connectivity, the index build operation continues in the background. You can defer the index build phase using the defer_build clause. In deferred build mode, CREATE INDEX creates the index definition, but does not trigger the index build phase. You can then build the index using the BUILD INDEX command.

You can create multiple identical secondary indexes on a keyspace and place them on separate nodes for better index availability. The recommended way to do this is using the num_replica option.

RBAC Privileges

User executing the CREATE INDEX statement must have the Query Manage Index privilege granted on the keyspace. For more details about user roles, see Authorization .

create-index ::= 'CREATE' 'INDEX' index-name ( 'IF' 'NOT' 'EXISTS' )? 'ON' keyspace-ref
                 '(' index-key lead-key-attribs? ( ( ',' index-key key-attribs? )+ )? ')'
                 index-partition? where-clause? index-using? index-with?

[Required] A unique name that identifies the index.

Valid GSI index names can contain any of the following characters: A-Z a-z 0-9 # _ , and must start with a letter, [ A-Z a-z ]. The minimum length of an index name is 1 character and there is no maximum length set for an index name. When querying, if the index name contains a # or _ character, you must enclose the index name within backticks.

[Required] Specifies the keyspace where the index is created. Refer to Keyspace Reference below.

[Required] Specifies an index key. Refer to Index Key below.

[Optional] Specifies attributes for the leading index key. Refer to Index Key Attributes below.

[Optional] Specifies attributes for a non-leading index key. Refer to Index Key Attributes below.

[Optional] Specifies index partitions. Refer to PARTITION BY HASH Clause below.

[Optional] Specifies filters for a partial index. Refer to WHERE Clause below.

[Optional] Specifies the index type. Refer to USING Clause below.

[Optional] Specifies options for the index. Refer to WITH Clause below.

IF NOT EXISTS Clause

If the keyspace is a named collection, or the default collection in the default scope within a bucket, the keyspace reference may be a keyspace path. In this case, the query context should not be set.

(Optional) An identifier that refers to the namespace of the keyspace. Currently, only the default namespace is available. If the namespace name is omitted, the default namespace in the current session is used.

(Required) An identifier that refers to the bucket name of the keyspace.

(Optional) An identifier that refers to the scope name of the keyspace. If omitted, the bucket’s default scope is used.

(Optional) An identifier that refers to the collection name of the keyspace. If omitted, the default collection in the bucket’s default scope is used.

For example, default:`travel-sample` indicates the default collection in the default scope in the travel-sample bucket in the default namespace.

Similarly, default:`travel-sample`.inventory.airline indicates the airline collection in the inventory scope in the travel-sample bucket in the default namespace.

Alternatively, if the keyspace is a named collection, the keyspace reference may be just the collection name with no path. In this case, you must set the query context to indicate the required namespace, bucket, and scope.

(Required) An identifier that refers to the collection name of the keyspace.

Refers to an attribute name or a scalar function or an ARRAY expression on the attribute. This constitutes an index-key for the index.

A SQL++ expression over any fields in the document. This cannot use constant expressions, aggregate functions, or sub-queries.

An array expression. Array indexing enables you to create global indexes on array elements and optimize the execution of queries involving array elements. For details, refer to Array Indexing .

The optional INCLUDE MISSING clause ensures that documents which do not include the index key field are indexed regardless. If this clause is not present, then documents without the index key field are not indexed.

The INCLUDE MISSING clause can only be applied to the leading index key. The INCLUDE MISSING clause may be included before or after the ASC or DESC keyword.

Used to partition the index. Index partitioning helps increase the query performance by dividing and spreading a large index of documents across multiple nodes, horizontally scaling out an index as needed. For details, refer to Index Partitioning .

WHERE Clause

where-clause ::= 'WHERE' cond

You can specify multiple nodes to distribute replicas of an index across nodes running the indexing service: for example, WITH {"nodes": ["node1:8091", "node2:8091", "node3:8091"]} . For details and examples, refer to Index Replication .

If specifying both nodes and num_replica , the number of nodes in the array must be one greater than the specified number of replicas otherwise the index creation will fail.

If nodes is not specified, then the system chooses nodes on which to place the new index and any replicas, in order to achieve the best resource utilization across nodes running the indexing service. This is done by taking into account the current resource usage statistics of index nodes.

When set to true , the CREATE INDEX operation queues the task for building the index but immediately pauses the building of the index of type GSI. Index building requires an expensive scan operation. Deferring building of the index with multiple indexes can optimize the expensive scan operation. Admins can defer building multiple indexes and, using the BUILD INDEX statement, multiple indexes to be built efficiently with one efficient scan of bucket data.

When set to false , the CREATE INDEX operation queues the task for building the index and immediately kicks off the building of the index of type GSI.

The indexer will automatically distribute these replicas amongst index nodes in the cluster for load-balancing and high availability purposes. The indexer will attempt to distribute the replicas based on the server groups in use in the cluster where possible.

If the value of this property is not less than the number of index nodes in the cluster, then the index creation will fail.

Index metadata provides a state field. This state field and other index metadata can be queried using system:indexes . The index state may be scheduled for creation , deferred , building , pending , online , offline , or abridged . You can also monitor the index state using the Couchbase Web Console.

If you kick off multiple index creation operations concurrently, you may sometimes see transient errors similar to the following. If this error occurs, the Index Service tries to run the failed operation again in the background until it succeeds, up to a maximum of 1000 retries.

If the Index Service still cannot create the index after the maximum number of retries, the index state is marked as offline . You must drop the failed index using the DROP INDEX command.

Using Indexes for Aggregates

If you have an index on a simple expression, such as geo.alt , you can use that index to satisfy a query on an aggregate of that expression, such as MIN(geo.alt) or MAX(geo.alt) . For details and examples, refer to Operator Pushdowns .

Index Replicas

In the Indexes screen in the Couchbase Web Console , index replicas are marked with their replica ID.

If you select view by server node from the drop-down menu, you can see the server node where each index and index replica is placed.

You can also query the system:indexes catalog to find the ID of an index replica and see which node it is placed on.

By default, index replicas are used to serve index scans. The system automatically load-balances an index scan across the index and all its replicas. Adding index replicas enables you to scale scan throughput, in addition to providing high availability.

To try the examples in this section, you must set the query context as described in each example.

For this example, unset the query context. For more information, see Query Context .

Create a secondary index that contains airports with an alt value greater than 1000 on the node 127.0.0.1 .

CREATE INDEX idx_default_over1000
  ON `travel-sample`(geo.alt)
  WHERE geo.alt > 1000
  USING GSI
  WITH {"nodes": ["127.0.0.1:8091"]};

For this example, the path to the required keyspace is specified by the query, so you do not need to set the query context.

Create a secondary index that contains airports with an alt value greater than 1000 on the node 127.0.0.1 .

CREATE INDEX idx_airport_over1000
  ON `travel-sample`.inventory.airport(geo.alt)
  WHERE geo.alt > 1000
  USING GSI
  WITH {"nodes": ["127.0.0.1:8091"]};

For this example, set the query context to the inventory scope in the travel sample dataset. For more information, see Query Context .

Create a secondary index with the defer_build option.

CREATE INDEX idx_landmark_country
  ON landmark(country)
  USING GSI
  WITH {"defer_build":true};

Query system:indexes for the status of the index.

SELECT * FROM system:indexes WHERE name="idx_landmark_country";

BUILD INDEX ON landmark(idx_landmark_country) USING GSI;

SELECT * FROM system:indexes WHERE name="idx_landmark_country";

CREATE INDEX idx_airport_missing
ON airport(district, name);

CREATE INDEX idx_airport_include
ON airport(district INCLUDE MISSING, name);