MarkLogic Content Pump (mlcp)

How Assignment Policy Affects Optimization

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How Assignment Policy Affects Optimization

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Last Updated: April 14, 2026
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MarkLogic Server
Version 10.0
Documentation

This section describes how your choice of document assignment policy can introduce additional limitations and risks. Assignment policy is a database configuration setting that affects how MarkLogic Server selects what forest to insert a document into or move a document into during rebalancing. For details, see Rebalancer Document Assignment Policies in Administrating MarkLogic Server.

Note:

Assignment policy was introduced with MarkLogic 7 and mlcp v1.2. If you use an earlier version of mlcp with MarkLogic 7 or later, the database you import data into with -fastload or -output_directory must be using the legacy assignment policy.

The following table summarizes the limitations imposed by each assignment policy. If you do not explicitly set assignment policy, the default is Legacy or Bucket.

Assignment Policy	Notes
Legacy (default) Bucket	You can safely use `-fastload` if: there are no pre-existing documents in the database with the same URIs; or you use `-output_directory`; or the URIs may be in use, but the forest topology has not changed since the documents were created, and the documents were not initially inserted using user-specified forest placement.
Statistical	You can only use `-fastload` to create new documents; updates are not supported. You should use `-output_directory` to ensure there are no updates. All documents in a batch are inserted into the same forest. The rebalancer may subsequently move the documents if the batch size is large enough to cause the forest to become unbalanced. If you set `-fastload` to `true` and mlcp determines database rebalancing is occurring or needs to be done at the start of a job, an error occurs.
Range	You can only use `-fastload` to create new documents; updates are not supported. You should use `-output_directory` to ensure there are no updates. You should use `-output_partition` to tell mlcp which partition to insert documents into. The partition you specify is used even if it is not the correct partition according to your configured partition policy. You can only use `-fastload` optimizations with range policy if you are licensed for Tiered Storage. If you set `-fastload` to `true` and mlcp determines database rebalancing is occurring or needs to be done at the start of a job, an error occurs.
Query	You can only use `-fastload` to create new documents; updates are not supported. You should use `-output_directory` to ensure there are no updates. You should use `-output_partition` to tell mlcp which partition to insert documents into. The partition you specify is used even if it is not the correct partition according to your configured partition policy. You can only use `-fastload` optimizations with range policy if you are licensed for Tiered Storage. If you set `-fastload` to `true` and mlcp determines database rebalancing is occurring or needs to be done at the start of a job, an error occurs.