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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [8.12] ›ES|QL

ES|QL limitations

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ES|QL limitations

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Result set size limit

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By default, an ES|QL query returns up to 500 rows. You can increase the number of rows up to 10,000 using the LIMIT command. Queries do not return more than 10,000 rows, regardless of the LIMIT command’s value.

This limit only applies to the number of rows that are retrieved by the query. Queries and aggregations run on the full data set.

To overcome this limitation:

  • Reduce the result set size by modifying the query to only return relevant data. Use WHERE to select a smaller subset of the data.
  • Shift any post-query processing to the query itself. You can use the ES|QL STATS ... BY command to aggregate data in the query.

The default and maximum limits can be changed using these dynamic cluster settings:

  • esql.query.result_truncation_default_size
  • esql.query.result_truncation_max_size

Field types

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Supported types

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ES|QL currently supports the following field types:

  • alias
  • boolean
  • date
  • double (float, half_float, scaled_float are represented as double)
  • ip
  • keyword family including keyword, constant_keyword, and wildcard
  • int (short and byte are represented as int)
  • long
  • null
  • text
  • unsigned_long
  • version

  • Spatial types

    • geo_point
    • point

Unsupported types

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ES|QL does not yet support the following field types:

  • TSDB metrics

    • counter
    • position
    • aggregate_metric_double

  • Spatial types

    • geo_shape
    • shape

  • Date/time

    • date_nanos
    • date_range

  • Other types

    • binary
    • completion
    • dense_vector
    • double_range
    • flattened
    • float_range
    • histogram
    • integer_range
    • ip_range
    • long_range
    • nested
    • rank_feature
    • rank_features
    • search_as_you_type

Querying a column with an unsupported type returns an error. If a column with an unsupported type is not explicitly used in a query, it is returned with null values, with the exception of nested fields. Nested fields are not returned at all.

Full-text search is not supported

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Because of the way ES|QL treats text values, full-text search is not yet supported. Queries on text fields are like queries on keyword fields: they are case-sensitive and need to match the full string.

For example, after indexing a field of type text with the value Elasticsearch query language, the following WHERE clause does not match because the LIKE operator is case-sensitive:

| WHERE field LIKE "elasticsearch query language"

The following WHERE clause does not match either, because the LIKE operator tries to match the whole string:

| WHERE field LIKE "Elasticsearch"

As a workaround, use wildcards and regular expressions. For example:

| WHERE field RLIKE "[Ee]lasticsearch.*"

text fields behave like keyword fields

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While ES|QL supports text fields, ES|QL does not treat these fields like the Search API does. ES|QL queries do not query or aggregate the analyzed string. Instead, an ES|QL query will try to get a text field’s subfield of the keyword family type and query/aggregate that. If it’s not possible to retrieve a keyword subfield, ES|QL will get the string from a document’s _source. If the _source cannot be retrieved, for example when using synthetic source, null is returned.

Note that ES|QL’s retrieval of keyword subfields may have unexpected consequences. An ES|QL query on a text field is case-sensitive. Furthermore, a subfield may have been mapped with a normalizer, which can transform the original string. Or it may have been mapped with ignore_above, which can truncate the string. None of these mapping operations are applied to an ES|QL query, which may lead to false positives or negatives.

To avoid these issues, a best practice is to be explicit about the field that you query, and query keyword sub-fields instead of text fields.

Time series data streams are not supported

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ES|QL does not support querying time series data streams (TSDS).

Cross-cluster search is not supported

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ES|QL does not support cross-cluster search.

Date math limitations

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Date math expressions work well when the leftmost expression is a datetime, for example:

now() + 1 year - 2hour + ...

But using parentheses or putting the datetime to the right is not always supported yet. For example, the following expressions fail:

1year + 2hour + now()
now() + (1year + 2hour)

Date math does not allow subtracting two datetimes, for example:

now() - 2023-10-26

Enrich limitations

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The ES|QL ENRICH command only supports enrich policies of type match. Furthermore, ENRICH only supports enriching on a column of type keyword.

Dissect limitations

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The DISSECT command does not support reference keys.

Grok limitations

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The GROK command does not support configuring custom patterns, or multiple patterns. The GROK command is not subject to Grok watchdog settings.

Multivalue limitations

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ES|QL supports multivalued fields, but functions return null when applied to a multivalued field, unless documented otherwise. Work around this limitation by converting the field to single value with one of the multivalue functions.

Timezone support

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ES|QL only supports the UTC timezone.

Kibana limitations

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  • The user interface to filter data is not enabled when Discover is in ES|QL mode. To filter data, write a query that uses the WHERE command instead.
  • In ES|QL mode, clicking a field in the field list in Discover does not show quick statistics for that field.
  • Discover shows no more than 10,000 rows. This limit only applies to the number of rows that are retrieved by the query and displayed in Discover. Queries and aggregations run on the full data set.
  • Discover shows no more than 50 columns. If a query returns more than 50 columns, Discover only shows the first 50.
  • Querying many many indices at once without any filters can cause an error in kibana which looks like [esql] > Unexpected error from Elasticsearch: The content length (536885793) is bigger than the maximum allowed string (536870888). The response from ES|QL is too long. Use DROP or KEEP to limit the number of fields returned.
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