TimetoIndex

TimetoIndex, abbreviated TTI, is a metric used in data management and search systems to quantify the time between when a data item is created or ingested and when it is first searchable by the index. It serves as a performance indicator for indexing pipelines and data freshness.

TimetoIndex can apply to batch and streaming data, across document stores, logs, or content feeds. It covers ingestion, normalization, transformation, and indexing steps, and it can vary with dataset type, index configuration, and system architecture.

Calculation and variants: TTI is typically defined as the difference between the source timestamp and the time the item becomes queryable in the index. Organizations may report median TTI, 95th percentile TTI, or maximum TTI. In streaming contexts, TTI can be tracked per event window or per shard.

Use and limitations: TTI is used for capacity planning, performance tuning, and service-level agreements. It is influenced by data size, schema complexity, pipeline parallelism, and compute resources, and can vary over time. It may not capture user-facing delays caused by routing, caching, or ranking.

Related concepts include data latency, indexing throughput, search latency, ETL, and data pipelines. TimetoIndex provides a lens for evaluating how quickly new data becomes accessible to users through a search-enabled system.