What is the difference between MonotonicRead and ReadYourWrites in RavenDB?

Question

The default ctor for DocumentConvention in RavenDB (build 888) sets the DefaultQueryingConsistency to MonotonicRead. As I understand it, this means that by default, we'll be waiting for indexes to be updated following a write. Don't get me wrong - that's great news for simplicity (especially in integration tests) but it goes against what I understood to be part of RavenDB's mantra of eventual consistency.

I've read the article referenced in ConsistencyOptions.cs but I'm confused as to what the difference is between MonotonicRead and ReadYourWrites - they appear to be the same to me.

So: what is the difference between these two consistency models, and how does that relate to RavenDB's consistency model?

Answer 1

ReadYourWrites is equivalent to doing WaitForNonStaleResultsAsOfLastWrite on all queries. It means that you won't get any stale results (or get a timeout exception) from any map indexes, but that you might still get stale results from map/reduce queries.