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Index data from Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin for queries in Azure AI Search

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Important

The Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin indexer is currently in public preview under Supplemental Terms of Use. Currently, there is no SDK support.

In this article, learn how to configure an indexer that imports content from Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin and makes it searchable in Azure AI Search.

This article supplements Create an indexer with information that's specific to Cosmos DB. It uses the REST APIs to demonstrate a three-part workflow common to all indexers: create a data source, create an index, create an indexer. Data extraction occurs when you submit the Create Indexer request.

Because terminology can be confusing, it's worth noting that Azure Cosmos DB indexing and Azure AI Search indexing are different operations. Indexing in Azure AI Search creates and loads a search index on your search service.

Prerequisites

Define the data source

The data source definition specifies the data to index, credentials, and policies for identifying changes in the data. A data source is defined as an independent resource so that it can be used by multiple indexers.

For this call, specify a preview REST API version to create a data source that connects via an Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin. You can use 2021-04-01-preview or later. We recommend the latest preview API.

  1. Create or update a data source to set its definition:

     POST https://[service name].search.windows.net/datasources?api-version=2024-05-01-preview
 Content-Type: application/json
 api-key: [Search service admin key]
 {
   "name": "[my-cosmosdb-gremlin-ds]",
   "type": "cosmosdb",
   "credentials": {
     "connectionString": "AccountEndpoint=https://[cosmos-account-name].documents.azure.com;AccountKey=[cosmos-account-key];Database=[cosmos-database-name];ApiKind=Gremlin;"
   },
   "container": {
     "name": "[cosmos-db-collection]",
     "query": "g.V()"
   },
   "dataChangeDetectionPolicy": {
     "@odata.type": "#Microsoft.Azure.Search.HighWaterMarkChangeDetectionPolicy",
     "highWaterMarkColumnName": "_ts"
   },
   "dataDeletionDetectionPolicy": null,
   "encryptionKey": null,
   "identity": null
 }
 }

  2. Set "type" to "cosmosdb" (required).

  3. Set "credentials" to a connection string. The next section describes the supported formats.

  4. Set "container" to the collection. The "name" property is required and it specifies the ID of the graph.

    The "query" property is optional. By default the Azure AI Search indexer for Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin makes every vertex in your graph a document in the index. Edges will be ignored. The query default is g.V(). Alternatively, you could set the query to only index the edges. To index the edges, set the query to g.E().

  5. Set "dataChangeDetectionPolicy" if data is volatile and you want the indexer to pick up just the new and updated items on subsequent runs. Incremental progress will be enabled by default using _ts as the high water mark column.

  6. Set "dataDeletionDetectionPolicy" if you want to remove search documents from a search index when the source item is deleted.

Supported credentials and connection strings

Indexers can connect to a collection using the following connections. For connections that target Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin, be sure to include "ApiKind" in the connection string.

Avoid port numbers in the endpoint URL. If you include the port number, the connection will fail.

Full access connection string
{ "connectionString" : "AccountEndpoint=https://<Cosmos DB account name>.documents.azure.com;AccountKey=<Cosmos DB auth key>;Database=<Cosmos DB database id>;ApiKind=MongoDb" }
You can get the connection string from the Azure Cosmos DB account page in Azure portal by selecting Keys in the left navigation pane. Make sure to select a full connection string and not just a key.
Managed identity connection string
{ "connectionString" : "ResourceId=/subscriptions/<your subscription ID>/resourceGroups/<your resource group name>/providers/Microsoft.DocumentDB/databaseAccounts/<your cosmos db account name>/;(ApiKind=[api-kind];)" }
This connection string doesn't require an account key, but you must have previously configured a search service to connect using a managed identity and created a role assignment that grants Cosmos DB Account Reader Role permissions. See Setting up an indexer connection to an Azure Cosmos DB database using a managed identity for more information.

Add search fields to an index

In a search index, add fields to accept the source JSON documents or the output of your custom query projection. Ensure that the search index schema is compatible with your graph. For content in Azure Cosmos DB, your search index schema should correspond to the Azure Cosmos DB items in your data source.

  1. Create or update an index to define search fields that will store data:

     POST https://[service name].search.windows.net/indexes?api-version=2024-05-01-preview
 Content-Type: application/json
 api-key: [Search service admin key]
 {
    "name": "mysearchindex",
    "fields": [
     {
         "name": "rid",
         "type": "Edm.String",
         "facetable": false,
         "filterable": false,
         "key": true,
         "retrievable": true,
         "searchable": true,
         "sortable": false,
         "analyzer": "standard.lucene",
         "indexAnalyzer": null,
         "searchAnalyzer": null,
         "synonymMaps": [],
         "fields": []
     },{
     }, {
         "name": "label",
         "type": "Edm.String",
         "searchable": true,
         "filterable": false,
         "retrievable": true,
         "sortable": false,
         "facetable": false,
         "key": false,
         "indexAnalyzer": null,
         "searchAnalyzer": null,
         "analyzer": "standard.lucene",
         "synonymMaps": []
    }]
  }

  2. Create a document key field ("key": true). For partitioned collections, the default document key is the Azure Cosmos DB _rid property, which Azure AI Search automatically renames to rid because field names can’t start with an underscore character. Also, Azure Cosmos DB _rid values contain characters that are invalid in Azure AI Search keys. For this reason, the _rid values are Base64 encoded.

  3. Create additional fields for more searchable content. See Create an index for details.

Mapping data types

JSON data type Azure AI Search field types
Bool Edm.Boolean, Edm.String
Numbers that look like integers Edm.Int32, Edm.Int64, Edm.String
Numbers that look like floating-points Edm.Double, Edm.String
String Edm.String
Arrays of primitive types such as ["a", "b", "c"] Collection(Edm.String)
Strings that look like dates Edm.DateTimeOffset, Edm.String
GeoJSON objects such as { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [long, lat] } Edm.GeographyPoint
Other JSON objects N/A

Configure and run the Azure Cosmos DB indexer

Once the index and data source have been created, you're ready to create the indexer. Indexer configuration specifies the inputs, parameters, and properties controlling run time behaviors.

  1. Create or update an indexer by giving it a name and referencing the data source and target index:

    POST https://[service name].search.windows.net/indexers?api-version=2024-05-01-preview
Content-Type: application/json
api-key: [search service admin key]
{
    "name" : "[my-cosmosdb-indexer]",
    "dataSourceName" : "[my-cosmosdb-gremlin-ds]",
    "targetIndexName" : "[my-search-index]",
    "disabled": null,
    "schedule": null,
    "parameters": {
        "batchSize": null,
        "maxFailedItems": 0,
        "maxFailedItemsPerBatch": 0,
        "base64EncodeKeys": false,
        "configuration": {}
        },
    "fieldMappings": [],
    "encryptionKey": null
}

  2. Specify field mappings if there are differences in field name or type, or if you need multiple versions of a source field in the search index.

  3. See Create an indexer for more information about other properties.

An indexer runs automatically when it's created. You can prevent this by setting "disabled" to true. To control indexer execution, run an indexer on demand or put it on a schedule.

Check indexer status

To monitor the indexer status and execution history, send a Get Indexer Status request:

GET https://myservice.search.windows.net/indexers/myindexer/status?api-version=2024-05-01-preview
  Content-Type: application/json  
  api-key: [admin key]

The response includes status and the number of items processed. It should look similar to the following example:

    {
        "status":"running",
        "lastResult": {
            "status":"success",
            "errorMessage":null,
            "startTime":"2022-02-21T00:23:24.957Z",
            "endTime":"2022-02-21T00:36:47.752Z",
            "errors":[],
            "itemsProcessed":1599501,
            "itemsFailed":0,
            "initialTrackingState":null,
            "finalTrackingState":null
        },
        "executionHistory":
        [
            {
                "status":"success",
                "errorMessage":null,
                "startTime":"2022-02-21T00:23:24.957Z",
                "endTime":"2022-02-21T00:36:47.752Z",
                "errors":[],
                "itemsProcessed":1599501,
                "itemsFailed":0,
                "initialTrackingState":null,
                "finalTrackingState":null
            },
            ... earlier history items
        ]
    }

Execution history contains up to 50 of the most recently completed executions, which are sorted in the reverse chronological order so that the latest execution comes first.

Indexing new and changed documents

Once an indexer has fully populated a search index, you might want subsequent indexer runs to incrementally index just the new and changed documents in your database.

To enable incremental indexing, set the "dataChangeDetectionPolicy" property in your data source definition. This property tells the indexer which change tracking mechanism is used on your data.

For Azure Cosmos DB indexers, the only supported policy is the HighWaterMarkChangeDetectionPolicy using the _ts (timestamp) property provided by Azure Cosmos DB.

The following example shows a data source definition with a change detection policy:

"dataChangeDetectionPolicy": {
    "@odata.type": "#Microsoft.Azure.Search.HighWaterMarkChangeDetectionPolicy",
"  highWaterMarkColumnName": "_ts"
},

Indexing deleted documents

When graph data is deleted, you might want to delete its corresponding document from the search index as well. The purpose of a data deletion detection policy is to efficiently identify deleted data items and delete the full document from the index. The data deletion detection policy isn't meant to delete partial document information. Currently, the only supported policy is the Soft Delete policy (deletion is marked with a flag of some sort), which is specified in the data source definition as follows:

"dataDeletionDetectionPolicy"": {
    "@odata.type" : "#Microsoft.Azure.Search.SoftDeleteColumnDeletionDetectionPolicy",
    "softDeleteColumnName" : "the property that specifies whether a document was deleted",
    "softDeleteMarkerValue" : "the value that identifies a document as deleted"
}

The following example creates a data source with a soft-deletion policy:

POST https://[service name].search.windows.net/datasources?api-version=2024-05-01-preview
Content-Type: application/json
api-key: [Search service admin key]

{
    "name": "[my-cosmosdb-gremlin-ds]",
    "type": "cosmosdb",
    "credentials": {
        "connectionString": "AccountEndpoint=https://[cosmos-account-name].documents.azure.com;AccountKey=[cosmos-account-key];Database=[cosmos-database-name];ApiKind=Gremlin"
    },
    "container": { "name": "[my-cosmos-collection]" },
    "dataChangeDetectionPolicy": {
        "@odata.type": "#Microsoft.Azure.Search.HighWaterMarkChangeDetectionPolicy",
        "highWaterMarkColumnName": "`_ts`"
    },
    "dataDeletionDetectionPolicy": {
        "@odata.type": "#Microsoft.Azure.Search.SoftDeleteColumnDeletionDetectionPolicy",
        "softDeleteColumnName": "isDeleted",
        "softDeleteMarkerValue": "true"
    }
}

Even if you enable deletion detection policy, deleting complex (Edm.ComplexType) fields from the index is not supported. This policy requires that the 'active' column in the Gremlin database to be of type integer, string or boolean.

Mapping graph data to fields in a search index

The Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin indexer will automatically map a couple pieces of graph data:

  1. The indexer will map _rid to an rid field in the index if it exists, and Base64 encode it.

  2. The indexer will map _id to an id field in the index if it exists.

  3. When querying your Azure Cosmos DB database using the Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin you may notice that the JSON output for each property has an id and a value. The indexer will automatically map the properties value into a field in your search index that has the same name as the property if it exists. In the following example, 450 would be mapped to a pages field in the search index.

    {
        "id": "Cookbook",
        "label": "book",
        "type": "vertex",
        "properties": {
          "pages": [
            {
              "id": "48cf6285-a145-42c8-a0aa-d39079277b71",
              "value": "450"
            }
          ]
        }
    }

You may find that you need to use Output Field Mappings in order to map your query output to the fields in your index. You'll likely want to use Output Field Mappings instead of Field Mappings since the custom query will likely have complex data.

For example, let's say that your query produces this output:

    [
      {
        "vertex": {
          "id": "Cookbook",
          "label": "book",
          "type": "vertex",
          "properties": {
            "pages": [
              {
                "id": "48cf6085-a211-42d8-a8ea-d38642987a71",
                "value": "450"
              }
            ],
          }
        },
        "written_by": [
          {
            "yearStarted": "2017"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]

If you would like to map the value of pages in the JSON above to a totalpages field in your index, you can add the following Output Field Mapping to your indexer definition:

    ... // rest of indexer definition 
    "outputFieldMappings": [
        {
          "sourceFieldName": "/document/vertex/pages",
          "targetFieldName": "totalpages"
        }
    ]

Notice how the Output Field Mapping starts with /document and does not include a reference to the properties key in the JSON. This is because the indexer puts each document under the /document node when ingesting the graph data and the indexer also automatically allows you to reference the value of pages by simple referencing pages instead of having to reference the first object in the array of pages.

Next steps