Does Azure Search result guarantee order for * query?

Question

I'd like to manage AzSearch documents (indexed items) by AzSearch C# SDK.

What I try to do is to list up documents by query result (mostly * result) continuously and edit values of them.

To list up query result is as below;

public async Task<IEnumerable<MyIndexModel>> GetListAsync(string query, bool isNext = false)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(query)) query = "*";
    DocumentSearchResult list;
    if (!isNext)
    {
        list = await _indexClient.Documents.SearchAsync(query);
    }
    else
    {
        list = await _indexClient.Documents.ContinueSearchAsync(ContinuationToken);
    }
    ContinuationToken = list.ContinuationToken;
    return list.Results.Select(o => o.Document.ToIndexModel());
}

One requirement is to jump to the n-th list of items. Since AzSearch does not provide paging, I'd like to know whether it gives ordered list or not.

If we do not update document count (not index further), does AzSearch give unchanged/ordered list so I can get the same document for jump to 80th list by running ContinueSearchAsync() method 80 times?

Do I have to maintain another lookup table for my requirement?

Answer 1

* is a wildcard query. Documents matching a wildcard query are given the same constant score in ranking because there's no way to measure how close a document is to . Further, order between the same score document is not guaranteed. A document matching '' can be ranked 1st in one response and 7th position in another even when the same query were issued.

In order to get consistent ordering for wildcard queries, I suggest passing in an $orderBy clause, search=*&$orderBy=id asc for example. Azure Search does support paging via $skip and $top. This document provides the guidance.