Thank you everyone for answering my questions.

Here is the way I understand it.  The first time a view is run it  
creates a key-values list from all documents.  Future calls to the  
view, update the key-value list with changed documents [added,  
deleted, updated].
If a startkey, endkey or key is used, only those keys that match in  
the list are returned.
If I use a different startkey, endkey or key, the key-value list is  
not rebuilt, it uses the keys from the first view.
Did I get it right?

Sorry about being obtuse. I have a project that can have over 10  
million documents and I need to understand how they can be indexed.

Thank you,
Anthony

On Apr 26, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Jan Lehnardt wrote:

> Heya Anthony,
> On Apr 26, 2008, at 20:50, Anthony Mills wrote:
>> Maybe I missing something.  When you create a view, does it create  
>> indexes for attributes in the database?  When you add new  
>> documents, do they automatically create the index for the  
>> attributes for the view?
>
> A view index only has a single index which is what you send in as  
> the first argument in the map() function. Nothing else is going on  
> automatically.
>
>
>> Also, can I call my view with soemthing like ? 
>> startkey=['20080403t000000', 1234]&endkey=['20080405t235959', 1234]  
>> to
>>
>> function(doc){
>> 	if(doc.type == "hello"){
>> 		map([doc.date, doc.number], doc);
>> 	}
>> }
>>
>> Then, through the magic of couchdb, I'll only get back those  
>> documents between the April 3rd and 5th whose attribute number=1234?
>
> Nope, you'd need a [doc.number, doc.date] index for that. It is  
> rather straightforward than magical. The map() function just creates  
> a key-value list that is sorted by key and you can query only ranges  
> within the key-space.
>
>
>> Will couchdb only search through records that match the key? or  
>> will it need to go through all documents every time I call the view?
>
> To build the view index CouchDB will go through all documents. But  
> only once. For documents that change, get deleted or added, CouchDB  
> incrementally updates the index. Also, view indexes are build when  
> you query the view, not when you add documents.
>
>
>> To get nerdy, I want my views to find records in O(log n) not O(n).
>
> You get your results in O(1) ;-) (after the first query to each view).
>
> In relational terms, think of a view as an index on a column without  
> the write penalty. So have as much as you might need.
>
> I hope that helps, feel free to send more questions :)
>
> Cheers
> Jan
> --
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Anthony
>>
>> On Apr 26, 2008, at 1:02 AM, Chris Anderson wrote:
>>
>>> Anthony,
>>>
>>> http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/ViewCollation is the way to  
>>> accomplish
>>> tasks like that.
>>>
>>> Christopher Lenz has a write-up of how to use view collation to sort
>>> views, achieving comments grouped by parent blog post.
>>>
>>> http://www.cmlenz.net/archives/2007/10/couchdb-joins
>>>
>>> In your case you could index a view with date and type, like this
>>>
>>> [type, date]
>>>
>>> and then if you had say 5 types you'd do 5 GET queries against the
>>> database, each one fetching only the documents for that day.
>>>
>>> View collation is one of my favorite things about CouchDB. I'm  
>>> excited
>>> about reduce, because from what I understand, you could use it to
>>> lower this to 1 GET, if that's important to you.
>>>
>>> enjoy,
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:34 PM, Anthony Mills <amills1037@gascard.net 
>>> > wrote:
>>>> I read most of the documentation, wiki and blogs, but I still do  
>>>> not see how
>>>> to accomplish a certain scenario.  Hopefully I can describe it  
>>>> adiquitely.
>>>>
>>>> Lets say I have 1,000,000 documents [all of the same "type"] with  
>>>> a date
>>>> attribute.  Lets say I want to pick a subset of those documents.   
>>>> How can I
>>>> pick those documents of one type that fall on one day?  Will I  
>>>> need to get
>>>> all 1,000,000 documents?  What if I want all documents of one  
>>>> type on one
>>>> day that match another attribute?
>>>>
>>>> I pretty sure this is what map/reduce will help with, but is  
>>>> there a way to
>>>> do this now?  Can you use more documents to build date relations?
>>>>
>>>> Also, can you pass more variables than just key to
>>
>>
>