Justin,

thank you for the additional documentation pointer.  From what I read, I
understand that merging is a useful operation and that merges should not be
disabled.  I can agree to that, but as far as I have understood, the
point-in-time feature does not require that we disable merges.  It just
requires that the merge timestamp is set to the earliest point back in time
where we want to be able to look back to.  Does setting the merge timestamp
automatically disable the merges?

What I am still missing is why the "Inside MarkLogic" document describes
how MVCC timestamps can be used to implement "Time Travel" and the
"Application Developer's Guide" describe point-in-time queries if you
(assuming that you speak for MarkLogic) advise against using them.  The
"Application Developer's Guide" in particular describes how such queries
work, in detail, and it does not mention that one should avoid the
technique.

Is the documentation accurate?  Under what circumstances do you recommend
using the point-in-time technique described in the guide?  Does the
point-in-time query technique only work if merges are disabled?

Hans

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 7:40 PM, Justin Makeig <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Can you elaborate what you mean by "maintain the health of a database"?
> If we'd decide that we never want to delete any data in a certain MarkLogic
> database so that we can roll back to any point in time, what would be the
> down sides?  How would the database become unhealthy?
>
>
> Please take a look at the docs on merging, specifically the section,
> "Merges Are Good" <https://docs.marklogic.com/guide/admin/merges#id_43904>.
> Merging is the way that MarkLogic manages its internal data to support
> efficient and consistent ingest and query I/O. It is an internal process
> and completely orthogonal to how you version your documents.
>
> What you describe sounds more like temporal versioning. Please take a look
> at MarkLogic's bitemporal APIs <
> https://docs.marklogic.com/guide/temporal/intro>. With bitemporal
> management you maintain an immutable copy of the entire history of your
> data that you can query at any point in time. The APIs do all of the
> sophisticated work maintaining versions securely. The "bi" in bitemporal
> allows you to query the valid time of the document (e.g. a trade was
> effective on 2016-06-01) as you knew it at any point in time (e.g. the
> trade wasn't recorded until 2016-06-02 and then it was corrected on
> 2016-06-05).
>
> Justin
>
>
> On Jun 28, 2016, at 9:55 PM, Hans Hübner <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 10:36 PM, Justin Makeig <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> > as we want to be able to use the point-in-time query feature to track
>> document changes over time
>>
>> Point-in-time queries <
>> https://docs.marklogic.com/guide/app-dev/point_in_time> are not designed
>> for versioning, as I think you're describing it. The timestamps are
>> internal bookkeeping. (Think of them as monotonically increasing integers
>> rather than wall clock readings.) Querying at specific timestamp relies on
>> _not_ merging deleted fragments. For short windows, like minutes or even
>> hours, depending on your workload, this is OK. However, merging is
>> necessary and useful to maintain the health of a database.
>
>
> Can you elaborate what you mean by "maintain the health of a database"?
> If we'd decide that we never want to delete any data in a certain MarkLogic
> database so that we can roll back to any point in time, what would be the
> down sides?  How would the database become unhealthy?
>
> We have an existing application that makes use of another database system
> (Datomic) exactly in that way, and we would like to carry it over to
> MarkLogic.  The "Inside MarkLogic" document describes point-in-time queries
> as "Time Travel", but what you write seems to say that using timestamps
> that way would be detrimental to the health of the database, so I'd like to
> learn more before we convert.
>
> Thanks!
> Hans
>
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-- 
LambdaWerk GmbH
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10178 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 555 7335 0
Fax: +49 30 555 7335 99

HRB 169991 B Amtsgericht Charlottenburg
USt-ID: DE301399951
Geschäftsführer:  Hans Hübner

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