Couchdb View Compaction

Question

I understand that compaction of a db removes old revisions beyond the limit set in the config. The result is decreased disk usage, with little to no affect on view speed, because old revisions aren't part of the view index.

I recognize that view compaction is different from view cleanup, which removes unused view index files to save space.

However, what happens with a view compaction? I haven't been able to find much documentation on this, just that it is necessary. Does it operate similarly to db compaction in that it removes old revisions from design docs? If so, I don't think there is much of a benefit as design docs are usually small and few.

Answer 1

Views are structured similarly to databases, so when you make changes to documents there will be old revisions in your view index until you do a compaction, just like a database. The documentation doesn't state this explicitly, but it's implied by the "Views are also need compaction like databases" statement.