What is stale indexing?

Question

I've Started learning RavenDb, often I used to come across "stale indexing", couldn't find a better understanding of it. I tried documentation, but couldn't capture an easy way to grasp the point.

When I used SQL, I haven't heard anything about stale indexing. Is it special in no SQL databases?

NOTE: I haven't added the code, since my base knowledge of RavenDb is completely zero.

Can anyone point me in the right direction. It would be really helpful if someone give a real case scenario of using stale indexing.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Many noSQL databases compromise consistency for speed, and hence allow e. g. the index to be a bit out of synch during data updates. It will be eventually consistent.