Troubleshooting Advanced Search

Applies to release V R6 (5.10.x)

Problem

After updating to V R6, Using Advanced Search does not allow users to select values for multiple custom fields.

Context

Starting with release V R6 (5.10.x), users should be able to select values from multiple custom field facets on the Advanced Search page to better focus the search results (see Using Advanced Search ).

If you have updated Alation to V R6 from an older release, this functionality will become available after the search index is updated on your Alation instance.

The search index is expected to update automatically in the background after updating to V R6. On instances with a large volume of catalog data, this may take up to two days to complete. The same index update process is triggered over the next weekend after the update as a backup for the automatic run. After this update process has completed, users will be able to select values for multiple custom fields in advanced search.

Troubleshooting Steps

If after updating to V R6, you notice that advanced search does not allow users to select values from multiple custom fields, the automatic job run_update_indexes_for_multi_cf may have not run or not completed.

You can check if the job has completed successfully by checking if a file named index_update_completed_file_for_multi_facet exists at /opt/alation/site/site_data/.

If the file index_update_completed_file_for_multi_facet does not appear at /opt/alation/site/site_data/ after several days following the update, you can wait until the next weekend for the backup job to run or you can troubleshoot by running this job manually from the Alation shell.

To trigger the job manually,

1. Enter the Alation shell:

   sudo service alation shell
   

2. Enter the Django shell

   alation_django_shell
   

3. Run the following script:

   from rosemeta.one_off_scripts.update_indexes_for_new_fields import run_update_indexes_for_multi_cf
   run_update_indexes_for_multi_cf.delay()
   

4. Exit both shells:

   exit()
   exit
   

5. This job may take time. Upon completion, it creates an empty file index_update_completed_file_for_multi_facet. Check /opt/alation/site/site_data/index_update_completed_file_for_multi_facet to make sure the file now exists.

The functionality when advanced search allows for selecting multiple custom field values should now be available on your instance.