How can I map or associate a value to another in Cosmos DB (e.g., map Jabalpur to MP)?

Hi Harshit Gupta

Greetings!

There are several approaches you can consider for mapping city names to state values in Cosmos DB, each with its own advantages:

1.Embedded Documents: If the city-to-state relationship is static or rarely changes, the cleanest and most efficient approach is to embed the state directly within the document. This allows for faster queries, as all relevant data is contained within a single document.

 {
  "id": "1",
  "city": "Jabalpur",
  "state": "MP"
}

  
 

Benefits:

Faster reads – no need for additional lookups.

Simpler queries – especially useful for filtering or aggregating by state.

• Low maintenance – ideal if cities and their state mappings are stable.

2. Lookup Table: You can create a separate collection for city-to-state mappings. This is useful if you have a large number of cities and states and want to keep the data normalized.

City Collection:

{
  "id": "1",
  "city": "Jabalpur"
}

State Collection:

{

  "id": "1",
  "city": "Jabalpur",
  "state": "MP"

}

3. Reference Another Collection: Store cities and states in separate collections and reference the state collection from the city collection. This approach is ideal for maintaining data integrity and avoiding redundancy.

City Collection:

{

 "id": "1",
 "city": "Jabalpur",
 "stateId": "MP",    
  
}

State Collection:

{
  
 "id": "MP", 
 "state": "Madhya Pradesh"
  
}

Each approach has its own benefits:

• Embedded Documents: Best for read-heavy applications where you want to minimize the number of queries.
• Lookup Table: Useful for maintaining normalized data and avoiding redundancy.
• Reference Another Collection: Ideal for maintaining data integrity and supporting complex queries.

Recommended:

For your specific use case — mapping a city like Jabalpur to a state like MP — we recommend the Embedded approach if:

The city-state mapping is fixed or changes infrequently.

Need optimal read performance.

Value simplicity in document structure.

However, if you're managing a large, dynamic set of locations or foresee frequent updates to this mapping, using a lookup collection would be more maintainable and scalable in the long run.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

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