ClickHouse periodically updates the dictionaries. The update interval for fully downloaded dictionaries and the invalidation interval for cached dictionaries are defined in the `<lifetime>` tag in seconds.
Dictionary updates (other than loading for first use) do not block queries. During updates, the old version of a dictionary is used. If an error occurs during an update, the error is written to the server log, and queries continue using the old version of dictionaries.
You can set a time interval for upgrades, and ClickHouse will choose a uniformly random time within this range. This is necessary in order to distribute the load on the dictionary source when upgrading on a large number of servers.
Example of settings:
```xml
<dictionary>
...
<lifetime>
<min>300</min>
<max>360</max>
</lifetime>
...
</dictionary>
```
When upgrading the dictionaries, the ClickHouse server applies different logic depending on the type of [ source](external_dicts_dict_sources.md#dicts-external_dicts_dict_sources):
For MySQL (InnoDB), ODBC and ClickHouse sources, you can set up a query that will update the dictionaries only if they really changed, rather than each time. To do this, follow these steps:
- The settings of the source must specify a query that retrieves the changing field. The ClickHouse server interprets the query result as a row, and if this row has changed relative to its previous state, the dictionary is updated. Specify the query in the `<invalidate_query>` field in the settings for the [source](external_dicts_dict_sources.md#dicts-external_dicts_dict_sources).