search-analytics-design

An external search or analytics engine is necessary when full-text relevance, complex faceting, OLAP aggregation, or event analytics cannot be served by the source database or caching layers. It defines clear decision boundaries to prevent unjustified engine adoption.

Implement a blue-green reindex strategy with rollback capabilities to ensure zero downtime during schema changes. This approach allows you to validate the new index before switching traffic and safely revert if drift or failures are detected.

Multi-tenant search architecture requires permission enforcement in every query so users only see permission-filtered results. The design treats search engines as derived views, preventing them from becoming an unauthorized source of truth.

GDPR Right to Erasure handling requires explicit pathways to remove indexed personal data from the analytics engine. The design incorporates erasure controls alongside drift detection and ingestion failure monitoring to maintain compliance.

Freshness SLOs for derived search views are product-approved thresholds measured through operational observability metrics. The design enforces explicit write-path ordering from the source of truth to ensure the indexed data meets these freshness requirements.

Detect ingestion drift and failures by implementing operational observability requirements within the ingestion pipeline. The design includes measurable drift controls and fallback behavior to monitor data consistency between the source and the derived analytics engine.