Project limits and boundaries

Question answering limits provided below are a combination of the Azure Cognitive Search pricing tier limits and question answering limits. Both sets of limits affect how many knowledge bases you can create per resource and how large each knowledge base can grow.

Knowledge bases

The maximum number of knowledge bases is based on Azure Cognitive Search tier limits.

Choose the appropriate Azure search SKU for your scenario. Typically, you decide the number of knowledge bases you need based on number of different subject domains. One subject domain (for a single language) should be in one knowledge base.

With custom question answering, you have a choice to set up your language resource in a single language or multiple languages. You can make this selection when you create your first project in the Language Studio.

Important

You can publish N-1 knowledge bases of a single language or N/2 knowledge bases of different languages in a particular tier, where N is the maximum indexes allowed in the tier. Also check the maximum size and the number of documents allowed per tier.

For example, if your tier has 15 allowed indexes, you can publish 14 knowledge bases of the same language (one index per published knowledge base). The 15th index is used for all the knowledge bases for authoring and testing. If you choose to have knowledge bases in different languages, then you can only publish seven knowledge bases.

Extraction limits

File naming constraints

File names may not include the following characters:

Do not use character
Single quote '
Double quote "

Maximum file size

Format	Max file size (MB)
.docx	10
.pdf	25
.tsv	10
.txt	10
.xlsx	3

Maximum number of files

Note

Question answering currently has no limits on the number of sources that can be added. Throughput is currently capped at 10 text records per second for both management APIs and prediction APIs.

Maximum number of deep-links from URL

The maximum number of deep-links that can be crawled for extraction of question answer pairs from a URL page is 20.

Metadata limits

Metadata is presented as a text-based key:value pair, such as product:windows 10. It is stored and compared in lower case. Maximum number of metadata fields is based on your Azure Cognitive Search tier limits.

If you choose to projects with multiple languages in a single language resource, there is a dedicated test index per project/knowledge base. So the limit is applied per project/knowledge base in the language service.

Azure Cognitive Search tier	Free	Basic	S1	S2	S3	S3 HD
Maximum metadata fields per language service (per knowledge base)	1,000	100*	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000

If you don't choose the option to have projects with multiple different languages, then the limits are applied across all knowledge bases in the language service.

Azure Cognitive Search tier	Free	Basic	S1	S2	S3	S3 HD
Maximum metadata fields per Language service (across all knowledge bases)	1,000	100*	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000

By name and value

The length and acceptable characters for metadata name and value are listed in the following table.

Item	Allowed chars	Regex pattern match	Max chars
Name (key)	Allows Alphanumeric (letters and digits) _ (underscore) Must not contain spaces.	^[a-zA-Z0-9_]+$	100
Value	Allows everything except : (colon) | (vertical pipe) Only one value allowed.	^[^:|]+$	500

Knowledge base content limits

Overall limits on the content in the knowledge base:

• Length of answer text: 25,000 characters
• Length of question text: 1,000 characters
• Length of metadata key text: 100 characters
• Length of metadata value text: 500 characters
• Supported characters for metadata name: Alphabets, digits, and _
• Supported characters for metadata value: All except : and |
• Length of file name: 200
• Supported file formats: ".tsv", ".pdf", ".txt", ".docx", ".xlsx".
• Maximum number of alternate questions: 300
• Maximum number of question-answer pairs: Depends on the Azure Cognitive Search tier chosen. A question and answer pair maps to a document on Azure Cognitive Search index.
• URL/HTML page: 1 million characters

Create project call limits:

These represent the limits for each create project/knowledge base action; that is, selecting Create new project or calling the REST API to create a project/knowledge base.

• Recommended maximum number of alternate questions per answer: 300
• Maximum number of URLs: 10
• Maximum number of files: 10
• Maximum number of QnAs permitted per call: 1000

Update knowledge base call limits

These represent the limits for each update action; that is, selecting Save or calling the REST API with an update request.

• Length of each source name: 300
• Recommended maximum number of alternate questions added or deleted: 300
• Maximum number of metadata fields added or deleted: 10
• Maximum number of URLs that can be refreshed: 5
• Maximum number of QnAs permitted per call: 1000

Add unstructured file limits

Note

• If you need to use larger files than the limit allows, you can break the file into smaller files before sending them to the API.

These represent the limits when unstructured files are used to Create new project or call the REST API to create a knowledge base:

• Length of file: We will extract first 32000 characters
• Maximum three responses per file.

Prebuilt question answering limits

Note

• If you need to use larger documents than the limit allows, you can break the text into smaller chunks of text before sending them to the API.
• A document is a single string of text characters.

These represent the limits when REST API is used to answer a question based without having to create a project/knowledge base:

• Number of documents: 5
• Maximum size of a single document: 5,120 characters
• Maximum three responses per document.