Question

this is my document i want to query:

{
"_id":ObjectId("5062d30522dfae0e11000000"),
"id_resource" : "147",
"moment_created" : ISODate("2012-03-22T16:29:21Z"),
"moment_updated" : ISODate("2012-03-22T16:29:21Z"),
"users_involved" : [
    {
        "id_user" : "113928869",
        "state" : "answered",
        "id_folder" : "0",
        "is_deleted" : "0"
    },
    {
        "id_user" : "121624627",
        "state" : "new",
        "id_folder" : "0",
        "is_deleted" : "0" }
],
"posts" : [
    {
        "id_author" : "113928869",
        "post" : "hiohhio",
        "moment_created" : ISODate("2012-03-22T16:29:21Z")
    }
    ]
}

and this is how i tried to ensure my index:

db.message.ensureIndex({id_resource:1, users_involved : 1});

and this is the query i used to query my collection :

db.message.find({id_resource : "143", "users_involved" : {$elemMatch : {id_user : "101226353", state : "answered"}}});

but one explain later i get this output:

{
    "clusteredType" : "ParallelSort",
    "cursor" : "BasicCursor",
    "n" : 11,
    "nChunkSkips" : 0,
    "nYields" : 8624,
    "nscanned" : 1461277,
    "nscannedAllPlans" : 1461277,
    "nscannedObjects" : 1461277,
    "nscannedObjectsAllPlans" : 1461277,
    "millisShardTotal" : 1878,
    "millisShardAvg" : 939,
    "numQueries" : 2,
    "numShards" : 2,
    "millis" : 1646

}

getIndexes will return:

[
    {
            "v" : 1,
            "key" : {
                    "_id" : 1
            },
            "ns" : "messaging.message",
            "name" : "_id_"
    },
    {
            "v" : 1,
            "key" : {
                    "id_resource" : 1,
                    "users_involved" : 1
            },
            "ns" : "messaging.message",
            "name" : "id_resource_1_users_involved_1"
    }

]

sadly i do not understand why my query is not using the index id_resource_1_users_involved_1. Can anyone explain to me why my index is not used or how i have to build my index to support the query i want to use?

thx for time and help

UPDATE

shame on me, a typo on my side. So here is the actual explain of the query

{
    "clusteredType" : "ParallelSort",
    "cursor" : "BtreeCursor id_resource_1_users_involved_1",
    "n" : 5,
    "nChunkSkips" : 0,
    "nYields" : 2,
    "nscanned" : 46868,
    "nscannedAllPlans" : 93736,
    "nscannedObjects" : 46868,
    "nscannedObjectsAllPlans" : 93736,
    "millisShardTotal" : 281,
    "millisShardAvg" : 140,
    "numQueries" : 2,
    "numShards" : 2,
    "millis" : 220

}

so the query IS using my index but it is still slow , also nscanned is pretty big, so not the whole index is used? i will have to check if nscanned matches the amount of messages for resource x

using the compound index from JohnnyHK it got much much faster:

ensureIndex({id_resource:1, 'users_involved.id_user':1, 'users_involved.state':1});

explain

{
    "clusteredType" : "ParallelSort",
    "cursor" : "BtreeCursor id_resource_1_users_involved.id_user_1_users_involved.state_1",
    "n" : 5,
    "nChunkSkips" : 0,
    "nYields" : 0,
    "nscanned" : 7,
    "nscannedAllPlans" : 7,
    "nscannedObjects" : 7,
    "nscannedObjectsAllPlans" : 7,
    "millisShardTotal" : 0,
    "millisShardAvg" : 0,
    "numQueries" : 2,
    "numShards" : 2,
    "millis" : 1
}

so if i want to query the users_involved array i have to build a seperate index for every query?

also @JohnnyHK using the whole array as mentioned like:

find({id_resource : "197", "users_involved" : {$elemMatch : {id_user : "128825371", state : "answered", id_folder:"0", is_deleted:"0"}}}).hint("id_resource_1_users_involved_1")

did not improve anything, explain:

{
    "clusteredType" : "ParallelSort",
    "cursor" : "BtreeCursor id_resource_1_users_involved_1",
    "n" : 5,
    "nChunkSkips" : 0,
    "nYields" : 1,
    "nscanned" : 46868,
    "nscannedAllPlans" : 46868,
    "nscannedObjects" : 46868,
    "nscannedObjectsAllPlans" : 46868,
    "millisShardTotal" : 222,
    "millisShardAvg" : 111,
    "numQueries" : 2,
    "numShards" : 2,
    "millis" : 174

}

or maybe i am still doing it wrong?

*also i removed the shard information from the explain response, if this information may be important just say so

Answer 1

Because your compound index includes the whole users_involved array, the index can only be used when matching complete embedded document elements of the array. See here.

I think you’d be better served using a compound index that includes just the fields from users_involved that you intend to search on. So either:

db.message.ensureIndex({id_resource:1, 'users_involved.id_user' : 1});

OR

db.message.ensureIndex({id_resource:1, 'users_involved.id_user' : 1, 'users_involved.state' : 1});