Azure Cognitive Search - Index and Deletes

1
votes

I setup a demo instance of Azure Search with the web front end app.

One thing I have noticed is that even after I remove a document from Blob storage and the indexer runs again, the deleted document and its contents are still stored in the index. How can I remove the document’s contents from the index without deleting and recreating the index?

Here is the link to my GitHub repository for the template for this environment… https://github.com/jcbendernh/Azure-Search-Ignite-2018-Demo

Any insight that you can provide is extremely appreciated.

1
azuresearchindexing

1 Answers

1
votes

In order to get a document to be removed from your index by the indexer when it is no longer in the data source, you need to define a data deletion detection policy in your indexer.

There are two different approaches: 1. By defining a column that defines which fields are supposed to be deleted from your data source (SoftDeleteColumnDeletionDetectionPolicy) 2. Or by using the new native soft delete support in blob storage (NativeBlobSoftDeleteDeletionDetectionPolicy)

Both of these approaches are documented at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-howto-indexing-azure-blob-storage#incremental-indexing-and-deletion-detection

Thanks, -Luis Cabrera (Azure Search PM)