Partial update capabilities

You can perform a limited number of actions within partial updates. This topic lists these actions and also lists those changes that you cannot perform with partial updates.

You can perform the following actions with partial updates or while running partial updates:
  • Add an entirely new record with a new set of property values and dimension values to an existing index.
  • Remove a specific record from an existing index.
  • Modify selected property and dimension values in an existing record.
    Note: When you remove a record or modify property and dimension values for the record, the dimension values that are no longer associated with any records remain in the system.
  • Update an existing record, selectively adding and removing dimension and property values. Specifically, you can:
    • Add property values to a record.
    • Remove all property values of a property from a record.
    • Add leaf dimension values (but not mid-hierarchy values) to a record.
    • Remove specific dimension values from a record.
    • Remove all dimension values of a dimension from a record.
    • Add new auto-generated dimension values to an existing dimension.
    • Add new leaf dimension values that have been created as a result of Term Discovery extraction.
    • Add synonyms to a new leaf dimension value, when you are adding this dimension value. The first synonym becomes a dimension value’s name. (Also, the same string can be used as a synonym for multiple dimension values.)
    • Update spelling dictionaries. Use the admin?op=updateaspell operation to update the spelling dictionary while running partial updates.
Note: Use the baseline update for these operations.
You cannot do the following actions with partial updates or while running partial updates:
  • Add new dimensions.
  • Add new mid-hierarchy dimension values.
  • Add, delete, or change any aspect of an existing dimension value. For example, you cannot add, change, or remove dimension value properties. You also cannot add or change bounds for range or sift dimension values, change whether a dimension value is inert (non-navigable), or whether it is collapsible.
  • Add dimension properties to any dimension values.
  • Add new properties.
  • Update the index configuration files (such as the thesaurus and stop words files).
  • Update dynamic word forms. Dynamic word forms are calculated at index time and are not updated with partial updates.