In the partial update process, Forge takes as its input the data from the partial pipeline configuration files and the updates data.

As a result of ITL processing, the update files are created. These update files are applied to the MDEX Engine index.

The MDEX Engine does not close its port to incoming queries while processing partial updates.

When applying a partial update, the MDEX Engine modifies the dgraph_input directory and updates it with the new data received from a partial update. After a partial update completes successfully, the MDEX Engine automatically deletes the contents of this update from the dgraph_input/updates directory.

Although the MDEX Engine deletes the update files after it applies updates to the index, it continues to check the dgraph_input/updates directory each time it restarts. If you start up the MDEX Engine with update files in the updates directory (that have not been applied yet), the MDEX Engine applies these initial updates first, before starting to answer queries.

Partial updates are continuously applied to the in-memory representation of the data structures in the MDEX Engine, and to the index structures on disk that the MDEX Engine uses for processing queries.

This diagram describes partial updates processing: