How to explain in simple terms what is index and type in elasticsearch?

Question

elasticsearch

Hello!
The question is in the title.
The explanation that the index should be understood as a base, and the type as a table in this database, does not seem particularly good to me, since now there is a restriction in elastic that within the same index, but in different types, there cannot be one field with different type of data. That is, if it was like this: in /orders/orderthe field id- this is a number, and in /orders/comments- a string, then, with the second, it seems, version of elastic, you can no longer do this. id must be of the same type. For a regular DBMS, there are no such restrictions.
Now, for myself, I understand the type as another kind of filter. For example, I have an index /log. And as a type, I use the source of this log. That is, /log/api_request, /log/user_actionand so on. The structure of the document is the same, it's just that not all fields are used in some types.
So, after all, what is an index and a type? :)
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

IMHO an index is more of a data structure. How data is stored, how it is analyzed, in what format, etc.
type - he is a type. How data is stored and how you can work with it later. A banal example is the price saved by default as a string. No Sum/Everage/Min/Max can be done with it later without reindexing.
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/refe...