Are you preparing for an interview for a position that involves working with Elastic Search? Elastic Search is a powerful and widely-used search and analytics engine that is used by many companies to handle large volumes of data. To help you prepare for your interview, we have compiled a list of common interview questions that you may encounter. In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about Elastic Search interview questions, from the basics to advanced topics. So, let’s dive in!
What is Elastic Search?
Elastic Search is an open-source search and analytics engine that is built on top of the Apache Lucene library. It provides a distributed, multi-tenant capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface. Elastic Search is designed to be scalable, reliable, and easy to use. It is commonly used for log analytics, data exploration, and other search use cases.
Now that we have covered the basics, let’s move on to the interview questions!
15 Common Interview Questions for Elastic Search
1. What is the role of an index in Elastic Search?
An index in Elastic Search is similar to a database in a traditional relational database system. It is a collection of documents that have similar characteristics and can be searched as a single unit. Each document in an index is assigned a unique identifier called a Document ID, which is used to retrieve the document.
2. How does Elastic Search handle distributed searching?
Elastic Search uses a distributed architecture to handle searching across multiple nodes. When a search request is made, Elastic Search distributes the request to the appropriate nodes in the cluster based on the data that needs to be searched. The results from each node are then combined and returned to the user.
3. What is a shard in Elastic Search?
A shard is a subset of the data in an index. When an index becomes too large to fit on a single node, Elastic Search automatically splits the index into multiple shards and distributes them across multiple nodes. This allows for parallel processing of search requests and improves performance.
4. How does Elastic Search handle data replication?
Elastic Search uses the concept of replicas to provide high availability and fault tolerance. Replicas are exact copies of the primary shards and are stored on different nodes in the cluster. If a node fails, the replicas can be promoted to primary shards to ensure that the data is still available.
5. What is relevance scoring in Elastic Search?
Relevance scoring is a key feature of Elastic Search that determines the order in which search results are returned. Elastic Search calculates a relevance score for each document based on factors such as term frequency, inverse document frequency, and field length. The documents with the highest relevance scores are ranked higher in the search results.
6. How can you perform a full-text search in Elastic Search?
In Elastic Search, you can perform a full-text search by using the match query. The match query analyzes the input text and looks for matching terms in the specified fields. You can also use other types of queries, such as the term query and the range query, to perform more specific searches.
7. What is the difference between filtering and querying in Elastic Search?
In Elastic Search, filtering is used to narrow down the search results based on specific criteria, such as a range of values or a combination of conditions. Filtering does not affect the relevance scoring of the documents. On the other hand, querying is used to retrieve documents that match specific search criteria and affects the relevance scoring.
8. How can you sort search results in Elastic Search?
In Elastic Search, you can sort search results based on one or more fields. You can specify the sort order as ascending or descending. By default, Elastic Search sorts the results based on the relevance score. You can also perform nested sorting to sort the results based on multiple fields.
9. Can you explain the concept of mapping in Elastic Search?
In Elastic Search, mapping is used to define the schema of the documents in an index. It specifies the data types of the fields and how the fields should be indexed and analyzed. Mapping also allows you to define custom analyzers, tokenizers, and filters to control how the text is processed during indexing and searching.
10. How can you perform an aggregation in Elastic Search?
In Elastic Search, you can perform aggregations to retrieve summary information about your data. Aggregations allow you to calculate metrics such as counts, sums, averages, and percentiles over a set of documents. You can also perform nested aggregations to group the results by multiple criteria.
11. What is the role of a filter context in Elastic Search?
A filter context in Elastic Search is used to narrow down the search results based on specific criteria. Filters are used for caching and do not affect the relevance scoring of the documents. They are typically used for queries that have a high selectivity, such as term queries or range queries.
12. How does Elastic Search handle schema changes?
Elastic Search allows you to modify the mapping of an index to accommodate schema changes. You can add new fields, change the data types of existing fields, or update the analysis settings. However, some changes, such as changing the mapping of an existing field, may require reindexing the data.
13. What is the purpose of the _source field in Elastic Search?
The _source field in Elastic Search stores the original JSON document that was indexed. It can be retrieved along with the search results by specifying the _source parameter in the search request. By default, all fields are stored in the _source field, but you can exclude specific fields from being stored to save disk space.
14. How can you control the relevance scoring in Elastic Search?
In Elastic Search, you can control the relevance scoring by using boosting and query-time boosting. Boosting allows you to assign higher weights to certain fields or documents to influence the relevance score. Query-time boosting allows you to assign higher weights to specific terms or queries within a search request.
15. What are the best practices for performance tuning in Elastic Search?
When it comes to performance tuning in Elastic Search, there are several best practices to keep in mind. These include optimizing the mapping, using the appropriate data types, reducing the number of shards, monitoring the cluster health, and using caching and filtering to improve query performance.
Additional Resources for Elastic Search Interview Preparation
If you are looking for more resources to prepare for your Elastic Search interview, here are some additional topics that you may find helpful:
- Elastic Search architecture: Learn about the different components of Elastic Search and how they work together to provide a scalable and reliable search engine.
- Data modeling in Elastic Search: Understand the best practices for designing your data model in Elastic Search to ensure optimal performance and flexibility.
- Elastic Search APIs: Familiarize yourself with the various APIs provided by Elastic Search, such as the Search API, Index API, and Aggregations API.
- Monitoring and troubleshooting in Elastic Search: Learn how to monitor the health and performance of your Elastic Search cluster and troubleshoot common issues.
- Elastic Search security: Explore the security features offered by Elastic Search, such as authentication, authorization, and encryption, to protect your data.
- Scaling Elastic Search: Discover the strategies and techniques for scaling your Elastic Search cluster to handle large volumes of data and high query loads.
By familiarizing yourself with these topics, you will be well-prepared to tackle any Elastic Search interview questions that come your way.
