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Schema Design Anti-Patterns

Remove Unnecessary Indexes

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  • About this Task
  • Steps
  • Evaluate index use
  • Hide Indexes
  • Drop Indexes
  • Learn More

Creating indexes for every query can lead to unnecessary indexes, which can degrade database performance. Unnecessary indexes might be rarely used, redundant due to coverage by another compound index, or not used at all. To optimize database performance, it's important to minimize the number of indexes you use. Identify and remove unnecessary indexes to maintain efficient query execution and resource use.

About this Task

Consider the following courses collection, where each document stores information about a different school course.

// Biology course document
db.courses.insertOne(
   {
      _id: 1,
      course_name: "Biology 101",
      professor: "Tate",
      semester: "Fall",
      days: "Monday, Friday",
      time: "12:00",
      building: "Olson"
   }
 )

The courses collection has an index for every field:

  • _id is indexed by default

  • { course_name: 1 }

  • { professor: 1 }

  • { semester: 1 }

  • { building: 1 }

  • { days: 1 }

  • { time: 1 }

  • { day: 1, time: 1 }

Creating indexes for every field in a collection can lead to bloated collections and negatively impact write performance.

Steps

1

Evaluate index use

To determine which indexes are rarely used, use the $indexStats aggregation stage:

db.courses.aggregate( [ { $indexStats: { } } ] )

The operation returns the following:

[
   {
      name: "building_1",
      key: { "building": 1 },
      host: "M-C02FJ3BDML85:27017",
      accesses: { "ops": "Long('0')", "since": "ISODate('2024-06-24T17:35:00.000Z')" },
      spec: { "v": 2, "key": { "building": 1 }, "name": "building_1" }
   },
   {
      name: "day_1",
      key: { "day": 1 },
      host: "M-C02FJ3BDML85:27017",
      accesses: { "ops": "Long('1')", "since": "ISODate('2024-06-24T17:35:30.000Z')" },
      spec: { "v": 2, "key": { "day": 1 }, "name": "day_1" }
   },
   {
      name: "time_1",
      key: { "time": 1 },
      host: "M-C02FJ3BDML85:27017",
      accesses: { "ops": "Long('1')", "since": "ISODate('2024-06-24T17:36:00.000Z')" },
      spec: { "v": 2, "key": { "time": 1 }, "name": "time_1" }
   },
   {
      name: "day_1_time_1",
      key: { "day": 1, "time": 1 },
      host: "M-C02FJ3BDML85:27017",
      accesses: { "ops": "Long('110')", "since": "ISODate('2024-06-24T17:31:21.800Z')" },
      spec: { "v": 2, "key": { "day": 1, "time": 1 }, "name": "day_1_time_1" }
   },
   {
      name: "_id_",
      key: { "_id": 1 },
      host: "M-C02FJ3BDML85:27017",
      accesses: { "ops": "Long('150')", "since": "ISODate('2024-06-24T15:31:49.463Z')" },
      spec: { "v": 2, "key": { "_id": 1 }, "name": "_id_" }
   },
   {
      name: "course_name_1",
      key: { "course_name": 1 },
      host: "M-C02FJ3BDML85:27017",
      accesses: { "ops": "Long('120')", "since": "ISODate('2024-06-24T17:29:26.344Z')" },
      spec: { "v": 2, "key": { "course_name": 1 }, "name": "course_name_1" }
   },
   ...
]

  • The building_1 index can be dropped because it is not used for any queries, as indicated by its accesses count of zero.

  • The { days: 1 } and { time: 1 } indexes can be dropped because the compound index { day: 1, time: 1 } covers time-related queries.

You can also use MongoDB Atlas Performance Advisor (available for M10 clusters or higher) and MongoDB Compass to determine, hide, and drop unnecessary indexes.

2

Hide Indexes

After you identify unnecessary indexes, you can use the db.collection.hideIndex() method to hide the indexes and evaluate their impact on the database before you remove them.

db.courses.hideIndex( "days_1" )
db.courses.hideIndex( "time_1" )
db.courses.hideIndex( "building_1" )
3

Drop Indexes

If you determine the indexes are unnecessary and have a negative impact on performance, drop the indexes using the db.collection.dropIndexes() method.

db.courses.dropIndexes( [ "days_1", "time_1", "building_1" ] )

In this example, only the following indexes remain because they are the most frequently used and help optimize queries:

  • _id is indexed by default

  • { course_name: 1 }

  • { professor: 1 }

  • { semester: 1 }

  • { day: 1, time: 1 }

Learn More

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Reduce the Number of Collections