Yeah it was a bit confusing for me too initially but if anyone else still does not know the answer to this it is:- 1. Indexes are built and appended to at read

Yeah it was a bit confusing for me too initially but if anyone else still does not know the answer to this it is:- 1. Indexes are built and appended to at read time. 2. If you change the view code an index rebuilding will occur. (A hash of all the views in the design document is taken and compared with the previous hash. So even a small thing such as adding a space will in effect change the view code and trigger rebuilding of views.) 3. No change to any other part of design document will have any effect on views. I wrote in detail about it here (http://staticshin.com/programming/does-updating-a-design-document-in-couchdb-cause-rebuilding-of-views/ http://staticshin.com/programming/does-updating-a-design-doc...)