DROP TABLE IF EXISTS tab; -- Index type 'inverted' was renamed to 'full_text' in April 2024. -- Such indexes are experimental. Nevertheless test what happens when ClickHouse encounters tables with the old index type. -- Create a full text index with the old type -- This was how it was done in the old days. These days this throws an exception. SET allow_experimental_inverted_index = 1; CREATE TABLE tab(k UInt64, s String, INDEX idx(s) TYPE inverted(2)) ENGINE = MergeTree() ORDER BY k; -- { serverError ILLEGAL_INDEX }; -- There are unfortunately side effects of this behavior. In particular, if ClickHouse's automatic table load during -- startup finds a table with 'inverted'-type indexes created by an older version, it immediately halts as it thinks -- the persistence is corrupt. Similarly (but less severely), tables with 'inverted' index cannot be attached. -- A backdoor avoids this. Just set allow_experimental_inverted_index = 0 (which is the default). -- -- Note that the backdoor will exist only temporarily during a transition period. It will be removed in future. Its only purpose is -- to simplify the migrationn of experimental inverted indexes to experimental full-text indexes instead of simply breaking existing -- tables. SET allow_experimental_inverted_index = 0; CREATE TABLE tab(k UInt64, s String, INDEX idx(s) TYPE inverted(2)) ENGINE = MergeTree() ORDER BY k; INSERT INTO tab VALUES (1, 'ab') (2, 'bc'); -- Detach and attach should work. DETACH TABLE tab; ATTACH TABLE tab; -- No, the backdoor does not make 'inverted' indexes non-experimental. -- On the one hand, the backdoor is undocumented, on the other hand, SELECTs that use such indexes now throw an exception, -- making 'inverted' indexes useless. SELECT * from tab WHERE s = 'bc'; -- { serverError ILLEGAL_INDEX } -- The exception recommends to drop the index and create a 'full_text' index instead. Let's try. ALTER TABLE tab DROP INDEX idx; SET allow_experimental_full_text_index = 1; -- note that this is a different setting ALTER TABLE tab ADD INDEX idx(s) TYPE full_text(2); SELECT * from tab WHERE s = 'bc'; DROP TABLE tab;